


Cornholio Is Dead - A Tragicomedy

by the_names_of_those_who_love_the_lord



Category: Beavis and Butt-head, Daria (Cartoon)
Genre: I just wanted these fuckers to be really really sad, M/M, Other, This canon was just too damn happy, a serious fic on a serious earth, also: Daria shows up!, also: butthead discovers he has feelings, and possibly share a box with the surviving idiot, so I took these jerks' antics to their logical conclusion, to grieve, warnings for mentioned canonical child abuse, which is terrible tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-14
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-06-07 13:45:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 22,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6807463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_names_of_those_who_love_the_lord/pseuds/the_names_of_those_who_love_the_lord
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beavis and Butt-Head go out into the desert to set off a firework. Only one of them comes back.</p><p>In the ensuing meltdown, Mr. Van Driessen must pull off miracles to save the kid who set fire to his beard one time from suicide. It's gonna be a tough one-Highland is a town that hates being cheated out of tragedies. Friendships form, perverts get beaten up, and a weird little sophomore finds his soul.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Requiem for a Dumbass

The tragedy ground into motion with two freshmen buying dangerous contraband from a mechanic with assualt and battery convictions.

The players were as follows: Beavis, a skinnymalink with improbable blond hair, an underbite, and the voice of a grumpy baby boomer; and his accomplice/only friend, Butt-Head, who possessed teeth people winced at and a habit of stating information in a little-girl-crawling-out-of-your-TV monotone. Oh, and Todd, the violent mechanic. He just looked tough. And he didn't own any jackets with sleeves.

Now, before I go on, I must enlighten you on something: many people thought Beavis and Butthead were stupid to the point of non-sentience. They were not. It was much worse that that; they were innocent, like Adams meditating upon the shining apple in Eden. This is what led them to the abandoned construction site, where Todd was waiting with a single roman candle....

* * *

"Huh huh huh. Fireworks  _rule!"_

 _"_ Heh heh heh. Fire! Heh heh heh."

"You girls know how to light one these things?" Todd drawled, turning the candle around in his hands.

"Uhh, yeah?" Butt-Head figured they'd just make it up as they went along, like they did when they were assembling furniture. Or cooking. Or doing math.

Todd smirked. "No, you don't. Of course you don't. You're idiots."

"Whatever you say , Todd," Beavis agreed. His face was frozen in a pinball-eyed grin. He couldn't wait to get the firework into the desert and light that sucker. His hands were shaking with excitement. He hoped Butt-Head would let him set it off himself.

"Here's the deal," Todd said, not giving them the candle. "You chicks give me fifty dollars, right now, and I'mma let you have this. It's the best deal you'll get. The guy I stole this from paid like one hundred and fifty for it, so I'm actually selling it to you at a loss."

"That's, uh, very generous of you," Butt-Head replied, lost in all the advanced economics. He dug around in his pocket and withdrew their food budget for the month. "Here. We worked overtime for this-the firework better be, like, really cool."

Todd took it and stuffed it into his billfold. "You better be careful with this," he warned, unloading the firework into Butt-Head's skinny arms. "I don't wanna get busted by the cops because your stupid asses couldn't light a roman candle without getting your tickets punched."

"Oh, we'll be careful all right," Beavis giggled. His eyes were joyous blue pinballs. "Fire! FIRE! Heheheheheheheheh."

"Settle down, Beavis," Butt-Head snorted, clouting him across the back of his head. "Thanks, Todd. We'll see ya around." He settled the candle into the backpack he'd brought with him and slung himself onto his bike. Beavis followed suit, muttering like an animal gone rabid.

They cycled against a breeze that cooled their ruddied faces and turned their blood to grasshoppers. The smells-smoke from a bonfire somewhere, fresh-shorn grass, the waxy sweetness of honeysuckle-ran through them like water, like light. They were fourteen years old on a summer evening, about to shoot colour and noise into the desert sky. In that moment, they thought themselves immortal.

This is a common delusion in children.

* * *

Out in the desert now, wearing their flip-flops, but unafraid of snakes and spiders. Why would they be bitten? They were young; they had always been lucky.

Setting up a firework at night, with only the luminous moon to guide you, is supposed to be difficult, but only if you know what you're doing wrong. Butt-Head found it child's play. He merely had to skewer the stick the firework was on into the hard-packed sand, and yank the fuse out of its casing. He wound it away to a length of about two feet.

"The firework is ready, Beavis," he intoned. 

Beavis leaped around him, as frisky as a kid goat. "This is so cool it's gonna be awesome the whole town is gonna see this oh man oh man!"

Butt-Head grinned at him. He felt soppy all of a sudden. This crazy guy, this friend of his heart since they were both in diapers, had taken years of shit from him without a word of complaint. He handed him the lighter.

"Why don't you do the fuse?"

"You mean it?!" Beavis looked fit to die right there and go to Heaven.

Butt-Head shrugged. "Just do it, okay? Don't get all gay about it."

"Heheheheh, wouldn't dream of it. Heheheheheh. Fire!! Heh heh."

Beavis flicked a flame with his trembling thumb. He fell to his knees before the snake-body of the fuse and touched the violent, brilliant flicker to its tip. The fuse began to crisp; a thin plume of smoke drifted with the breeze. The flame crept up to the candle like necrosis.

Beavis hopped away to where Butt-Head was standing. The lighter was clenched in his bony fist hard enough to leave the logo bruised on his palm. "F-fire!" he jittered through clenched teeth. "FIRE!!! We're gonna be so cool! Todd'll let us join his gang for sure! Chicks'll want us like  _crazy!_ Even the guys will wanna score with us! It's like-like _-"_

"Settle down, Beavis," Butt-Head muttered. Something didn't feel right. He didn't know why, but his intestines were cramping the way they did before a final, or when adults cried. The sense of oncoming doom took him by the neck and strangled him.

The fuse burnt up to the firework.

"Beavis, we-"

The candle fell on its side and exploded with a scream, the scream that Beavis matched as it tore into him. Butt-Head got knocked off his feet; lying there in the sandy dirt, tasting grit and soot, he strained to hear Beavis above the ratcheting chorus of sparks and heard nothing. 

How long he lay there, he couldn't say. Time seemed to have fallen apart; it dripped as slow as honey, then slithered forward in great globs of minutes. He felt around himself for broken bones, but found none. He coughed, twice, and pushed himself upright with a groan.

There-that bright shape leaping twenty yards away-that was the firework. But what was the lump it threw light on? What was that?

"Aw, fuck," he croaked. He crawled across the scrub and rocks to it. "Aw, no. No."

Beavis's body lay slumped across a rock. Fire danced on his shirt, casting a wavering glow on his face that made it look like it was moving. The firework had punched him square in the stomach, harder than even Todd could dream of, and smashed his organs to soup. But it was the fall that had killed him; his neck was all twisted, his head thrown back at a funny angle. His eyes were half-open, the pupils blown and unmoving.

"Oh, Christ Jesus," Butt-Head whispered. "Beavis, I'm so sorry."

* * *

The desert is a place of extremes. The daytime will roast you; the night-time will freeze your very bones. 

Butt-Head spent seven hours in vigil, knelt next to the corpse. Coyotes came within feet of him, but smelled no fear and left him alone. A scorpion came out of the earth next to Beavis's head; Butt-Head picked it up and threw it away.

He talked, to keep himself warm.

"I'm gonna stay right here, Beavis," he promised. "Just like I did when you were really sick that time. I'm gonna stay here until you wake up. C'mon, man, I know you're not dead. You can't be dead. You're pranking me, or-or your body is fixing itself. I won't be mad, dude, I mean it. I'm holding out for you."

Later, with a murderous weight settling in on his shoulders, he spoke again: "Uhh, I know you're just playing, but....if you're not....then I just want you to know that that was the coolest thing you've ever done. And....um....I'm gonna kick Todd's ass, for real. You're the best friend I ever had, and....and it's not fair. I dunno how, but I know for sure that none of this is fair.

"Beavis, remember that time you told me about Rick the grief counsellor and I didn't do nothing? I never said it at the time, but that shit was so totally not your fault. Rick was a pervert, and if I ever find him, I'll kill him for you, dude, I mean it. You're a really sweet kid and he, uh, he did it. All of it. You just wanted some spaghetti. And, and I'm sorry I didn't believe you at first." He swallowed. "I don't think I've ever been that good a friend to you, even though we've known each other since we were in diapers, and you were the only kid in first grade who liked me. I'm sorry, man. Please wake up."

* * *

Mr. Van Driessen knew something was up the moment Butt-Head sloped into class without Beavis trailing behind him.

He'd been their homeroom and English teacher for eight months, and had known of them since they were kindergartners. The joke in the staffroom went, "Where your Beavis is, there your Butt-Head will be also." If Beavis happened to be stuffed headfirst into a toilet bowl by Todd, one could bet on Earl doing the same thing to Butt-Head the next stall over. If Beavis was too sick to leave the house, Butt-Head would starve indoors until he felt better. It was one of those immutable facts of life. The sun rises; the moon orbits the Earth; Beavis and Butt-Head are connected on a spiritual level.

Van Driessen watched Butt-Head out of the corner of his eye. The kid looked wrecked. His hair had settled in lank, sad clumps upon his head; his shoulders slumped; his feet seemed too heavy to lift all the way off the ground. And he kept glancing behind him, eyes wide, as though hoping against hope that his absent partner-in-crime was hiding beneath a desk.

Roll call was first; at the mention of Beavis's name, Butt-Head rocked in his seat, face twisted in some mental agony. Van Driessen decided to cut him some slack, and didn't ask him where the boy was. But he had that dragging sensation in his chest that signalled trouble. All there was left to do now was finding out what had happened. He didn't relish the prospect.  

They were doing "Wuthering Heights" in English; Beavis and Butt-Head had, for the past week, seen fit to offer criticism on every single character and plot point. It was like having a pair of drunk Cliffnotes guides at the back of the class. But today, Van Driessen got through Cathy's passionate confession, Heathcliff's running away, and the fleeting happiness at Thrushcross Grange without rousing so much as a chuckle. Butt-Head only chewed on his knuckles and stared out the window.

"Let's break down the symbolism here," Van Driessen announced, moving to the blackboard. "Cathy makes her love confession just before the storm breaks. Heathcliff runs away, and then the storm begins. Who can tell me what this represents? Hands up, people."

A forest of hands sprouted. Van Driessen looked past them, and pointed.

"Butt-Head, maybe you'd like to give us your views. I have to say, the discourse feels lacking without your....insights."

Butt-Head didn't move for a moment; his ears seemed to be on a time delay. When he did answer, his voice was muted by his fingers. "Uhhhhh....like, it's because somebody's sad? Or angry. I dunno, sir...."

Conceding defeat, Van Driessen put down the chalk. "Butt-Head, where's Beavis?"

He'd been teaching for ten years, in every kind of school there was. He knew the ways of children; he could read anger and distress from the twitch of a mouth. But until now, he'd never seen such cataclysmic sadness on a fourteen-year-old face.

"Uhhhhhhhhhhh...." the boy droned. "Uhh, he couldn't make it into school today."

"Why? Is he sick?" Head shake. "Hurt?" Wild-eyed glare. "Butt-Head tell me what's wrong with him. I won't be mad."

Butt-Head slithered down in his chair until his eyes were level with the little table attached.

A broken murmur emerged: "He's in the desert."

* * *

Van Driessen peered though the dusty windshield. "Are we nearly there, Butt-Head?"

His passenger nodded. "Yeah, almost. I recognise those rocks."

They were bouncing through the desert in Van Driessen's dented old minibus, heading for the site of whatever had happened. All Butt-Head was saying was that there'd been an accident. Every time he repeated it, a muscle in his jaw stood out.

A lump appeared on the horizon.

"Oh, man, that's him."

"It is?" Van Driessen cut the engine. "What's that other thing?"

"The firework."

"The-oh my God." Out of the bus, feet thudding on the baked soil. Running. He stopped at a distance of five feet and knelt down.

"Beavis? Beavis, can you hear me?" No reply. Van Driessen reached out and tapped one outstretched hand, felt the cool, molding skin, and drew back.

"Don't come any closer!" he yelled over his shoulder. "Just go back to the bus, get my cellphone, and dial 911."

"Is he dead?" Butt-Head roared back, straining to see.

Van Driessen edged around the body to glance at the face. Nothing could have looked more empty. A fly crawled out of the mouth, rubbed its forelegs together, and took flight.

He took off his glasses and knuckled his eyes.

"I'm sorry," he said, and it sounded so weak. He didn't even know what he was apologising for. "I'm so sorry, Butt-Head. Don't go near it. Please."

* * *

  _you are my friend_

_and what we're doing's too important for our lives to end quite yet_

\- "Anthrax", by Kimya Dawson.

 


	2. When Life Gives You A Lobotomy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The incident that Butt-Head mentions in this chapter-the attempted lobotomy-is canon. It appeared as the main plot in an issue of the Marvel comics, "MTV's Beavis and Butt-Head". For mental health reasons, I advise anyone uncomfortable with the ritual humiliation and abuse of disabled children to avoid reading them.

Highland Regional Hospital smelled of rubbing alcohol and dry rot, gangrene and mashed potatoes. Butt-Head folded his angular legs up onto his chair and pulled his t-shirt over them.

"This one time," he mumbled, not taking his eyes off the door they'd wheeled Beavis through, "we almost had lil' parts of our brains taken out here."

Mr. Van Driessen put down the magazine he'd been staring at. He hadn't a clue what the article was about. "You mean a lobotomy?"

"Yeah."

"Why'd you do that?"

"They were gonna pay us," Butt-Head replied, frowning, "and we don't really use our brains that much anyway."

"I take it you didn't go through with it."

"Naw, they said we were....were....something to do with brain diseases, I dunno. Said we needed all the, uh, 'grey matter' we had. An' then they found out we weren't eighteen, so they kicked us out. I don't think they give money for operations anymore." He shifted on the plastic chair. "Mr. Van Driessen, why'd they take Beavis if he's dead?"

Van Driessen found that he couldn't look at him, so he took off his glasses and wiped them off with the tail of his shirt. "They have to pronounce him dead. It's just a formality."

Just then, a nurse opened the door and peered out. "Um, I'm looking for the guy who came in with the juvenile D.O.A.?"

Butt-Head stood up, joints creaking.

Van Driessen put a hand on his shoulder to push him back down and said, "That'd be me." 

"You knew this kid?"

"I, um, I was his teacher."

The nurse grunted. "Come with me. We need to identify the body before we notify the relatives."

Butt-Head's monotone accosted them-"He doesn't have any relatives."

Van Driessen and the nurse craned their heads to look at him. He was standing up again, shaking all over, scowling. 

"Beavis doesn't have a dad," he proclaimed, glaring at them with his narrow lizard eyes. "Nobody knows where his mom is. I'm the only family he's got."

"Sit down, son," the nurse said, trying to sound kind. "We're gonna take real good care of your friend, I promise, now why don't you-"

"You assmunch," Butt-Head growled. He shoved past them and strode down the corridor, muttering to himself.

The nurse sighed and scribbled "INDIGENT" on a form on his clipboard. "Some family. Now, before I drag that kid's ass outta the morgue, I'm obliged to inform you that we haveta do a post-mortem."

Another knot twisted in Van Driessen's gut. "Why? It was an accident. The boys were playing with a firework and it went haywire."

"Firework, huh?" Another blue-black scribble on the form. "Yeah, circumstantial evidence points to a death by misadventure, but this is a high school freshman with no recognisable fucking organs left. We wanna keep Mr. Braces in for observation, too."

"Don't call any student of mine names." Anger rose in him like a geyser, but he got a hold of it. "I'm sorry. I'm a little shook up here. I'm sorry."

"No offence taken. " The nurse glanced over his shoulder. "He gotta real name? The deceased, I mean."

"He calls himself Beavis, everybody does." Van Driessen rubbed his forehead. "No, did. God, this is so messed up....but I remember his Christian name is William. The kid inside's called Benjamin Head. They've been joined at the hip since kindergarten."

"Uh-huh." The nurse took out anouther form, scrawled "Benjamin Head" in a box at the top, and chewed on his pen for a moment. "Listen, we should really get him out of the morgue now. Like I said, we wanna keep him on board for the next three days; there's no way of knowing how a shock like this can affect people. Can you explain that to him?"

"I can try." Van Driessen pushed through and sidled up to the great double doors of the morgue. He eased one open and peered inside; his eyes caught on a familiar dark crest of hair, and a tattered grey t-shirt.

Butt-Head was standing beside the gurney they'd brought Beavis in on, murmuring to him. One cold, stiffening hand was folded between two live ones. A strand of frizzy yellow-white hair fell across Beavis's forehead; Butt-Head twitched it back, smoothed it down, and kept on talking.

Van Driessen strained to hear:

"....And I'm not mad at you, okay? Like, remember when you took my retainer outta its case and ran around pretending you were Dracula with it, and Nancy Hochs stole it an' we had to pay her to get it back? And I was crazy angry at you? This isn't like that, 'cos it's not your fault.

"Uhh....I kinda guess that you're not gonna wake up anymore. I'm real torn up about that, 'cos now it feels like half of me just got flushed down the toilet, and the rest don't amount to much. An' I shoulda saved you, I shoulda told you to stand back a little more." Butt-Head gave an almighty sniff, and dashed his fist across his eyes. "It's-it's all my fault. I'm sorry, Beavis. I was never a good friend."

Van Driessen cleared his throat. Butt-Head whipped around and regarded him with no real feeling, no expression. He looked so tired.

"The hospital wants to keep you for a little while," Van Driessen said, and tried to smile. It came off all wrong; he could feel it. "But not in here. Come on."

Butt-Head looked back down at Beavis's face-it was a corpse's by now-and gave the hand he was holding a gentle squeeze.

"....Bye, Beavis."

He let the hand go and sloped towards his teacher, head down. Van Driessen grasped his shoulder and steered him out of the morgue, out to the testy nurse.

* * *

 Beavis's classmates first learned of his death in homeroom on Monday morning, when Principal McVicker babbled "It's real! It's real this time!" down the intercom. 

He spat out the details, announced a brief party in the staff-room at lunch break, and signed off with a demented giggle.

Mr. Van Driessen took off his glasses, folded them, and hooked them into his pants pocket. Everybody was murmuring their confusion; he stepped forward to address them.

"Class," he said, "I have some bad news."

There was a cold moment of silence. 

Cassandra put up her hand and asked, "Are you sure?"

He blinked at her. "What do you mean?"

"Well," she said, "we've done this before, when we all thought they'd died and it turned out that they just didn't want to go to school."

"Yeah, they only come here for the free breakfast program," Stewart added. "Every time they find a box of cereal, they vanish for three weeks."

"This is different, believe me," Van Driessen told them. Something like lead had settled in his stomach. He could feel it shifting when he breathed. "Much as I hate to support anything your principal has said or ever will say, it's true this time. Beavis got hit by a firework on Saturday, and he....passed on."

There was a subtle shift in the atmosphere; Van Driessen had felt it before, when the fire alarms had begun ringing during an active-shooter incident in a Californian high school two years before. Skepticism flattened out into panicky grief, as quick and soundless as lightening.

"Butt-Head too, right?" Earl asked. He was fidgeting so hard that his chair made minute scraping sounds on the tiles. "I mean....he went too, didn't he?"

"No, Earl. He'll be back in school tomorrow."

That was the kicker. The classroom exploded into noise-there were no words, just a crazy, roaring buzz. That Beavis should be gone, when he'd been as alive as anyone on Friday, was earth-shaking enough; Butt-Head being cursed to remain shattered everything they knew. It was impossible. It was in the same category as the diamond in the cabbage patch, the troll in the boiler-room. 

Mr. Van Driessen heard someone's sob, the gulped gasp of it, and dreaded having to put his glasses back on.

* * *

_I had seen birth and death,_

_But had thought they were different...._

-from "Journey of the Magi", by T.S. Eliot.

 

 


	3. I've Had Me A Bad, Bad Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The uncle referenced in this chapter is, in theory, canon; during a music video, Butt-Head brings up an incident wherein he let himself and Beavis watch porn. During the next chapter, he'll be fleshed out into a supporting character.

_one month later_

Butt-Head showed up to school on the first day of October with baggy, raccoon-ringed eyes and no backpack. He had a new shirt, an orangey-puce number with the logo of Stewart's Christian summer camp blazed acoss the chest. The fit was peculiar; too wide across the chest, barely long enouth to cover Butt-Head's belly-button. He was still wearing his ugly red shorts, even with autumn about to blow in across the prairie.

He looked so cold and tired, shot through with grief, but everyone was glad to have him back.

That first day, he slumped in through the homeroom door two seconds before the bell went and stood there, breathing in and out, sweeping the room with his worn-out eyes. Stewart gave him a girlish little wave, and patted the seat in between him and Cassandra. Butt-Head glanced at the two empty chair at the back of the class; the fright of sitting beside Beavis's ghost wracked him with a tremor, and he made his way over to the place they'd saved for him.

Mr. Van Driessen watched him settle between the only kids left in the world who tolerated him, and thought,  _They're protecting him. This is the modern-day version of circling the wagons._ The idea of it made him want to smile, but smiling had been awful hard since the day he'd found Beavis in the desert. 

"Okay, class," he announced. The kids were rowdy, but he knew they'd quieten if he spoke. They were good like that; the best group he'd ever had. "Calm down, people. Now, when we left off, we were discussing the inherent destruction wrought by Heathcliff's return. I'd like to draw your attention to Chapter Seventeen, which is the the catastrophe's climax and aftermath...." 

* * *

Coach Buzzcut sloshed lukewarm coffee into the "Eat Pray Lift" mug Van Driessen had gotten him for the last faculty Kris Krindel. "How's he doing?"

Van Driessen looked up from the comparative essays he was correcting. "Who?"

Buzzcut snorted. "The Dalai Lama. I'm talking about Butt-Head-who do you think?"

"Oh." Van Driessen rubbed his eyes with the pads of his fingers. "He came back, which is....a relief."

"Damn straight." Buzzcut leant against the counter and stirred his coffee; a rare moment of taking-it-easy from a man who treated life like an offensive manouevre. "Where the hell was he? Sergeant McCluskey looked everywhere. Even broke down the door to that Godforsaken house of theirs. When the smell hit him, he thought he'd opened a tomb."

"I wouldn't know, but my guess is that he went to ground. He has family in a trailer park ten miles from here, an uncle and two cousins. He probably hung out with them for a while."

"Heh." The grin the coach gave him was devoid of joy. "Illegal pornography, stalking for roadkill, marshmallow fluff on graham crackers for dinner. Nice way to spend a month, if you can get it."

"Don't be an ass, Bradley." Truth in it, though. Bad nutrition and ambiguous morals sometimes collided in the industrialised scrub, where frogs got pressed into service as baseballs. Still, Butt-Head was a good boy. Maybe he had that unthinking cruelty in him that you saw in kids sometimes, but a sweet nature lived there too. "That doesn't matter, anyway. What matters now is keeping him in school, making sure that he's safe."

"Safe from what?"

"Todd. Himself." Van Driessen turned back to his papers, correcting on autopilot.

"Woah, woah, woah. Back up there." Buzzcut put down his coffee cup and pointed one of his heavy-duty frowns at him. "You don't think he could....?"

"I see no reason why he wouldn't. This is the first time he's come to school without Beavis since, what? Kindergarten? You know they loved each other."

Buzzcut thumped back against the counter, morose. "C'mon, Dave. Don't push your agenda onto everything. They only tagged around together 'cos they were the only people who could stand each other. A lot of the time, I thought Butt-Head wished he were smart enough to kill Beavis and get away with it."

"They had a weird way of showing it, I'll grant you that, but they were crazy about one other." Van Driessen shuffled the papers together and got up to leave the staffroom. "Don't believe me? Keep an eye on that boy over the next few days, and you'll see him fall apart."

* * *

Butt-Head made a good fist of it, but without Beavis, he was like a man with a stump where his arm had been. There's a peculiarity about amputations-for a while, the brain tries to function as though the limb is still there. Jars and glasses shatter on the kitchen tiles; footballs careen through the ghost of a catching hand. 

Butt-Head kept turning around in class, beginning a sentence such as "Huhuhuh, he said...." only to find Cassandra next to him, bemused. His chortle would die on his lips, and he'd whip his head down to stare at his desk.

Or he'd see some opportunity for mischief-the lunch server's toupee fell off into Martin's casserole one day, for instance-and he'd start forward to take advantage of it. But his steps would falter when he remembered that Beavis wasn't there to cheer him on.

Some of the teachers, being crass, had hoped that his schoolwork would improve (read: come into existence), since he didn't have his favourite person to distract him anymore. As if to spite them, Butt-Head went from disrupting the class to not even noticing it. He spent his time gazing out of the window towards the desert, doodling on donated foolscap pages and sighing from time to time.

Still, the faculty were jubilant. All the other students' grades were rocketing, and the migraine epidemic amongst the teaching staff had been brought to a standstill. Principal McVicker burst into the teachers' lounge one dull Tuesday evening, cackling.

"Take a look at this!" he crowed, slamming a sheet of paper onto the table. 

Mr. Van Driessen picked it up and pointed his glasses at it. "Sir, this is a report from your doctor. Isn't this supposed to remain confidential?"

"Only on the doctor's end of things," McVicker shrugged. "It says that I'm officially not depressed anymore! I can quit those damn pills any time I like!" He snatched the sheet back up again and wobbled back out through the doors.

There was a moment of weary silence in the lounge.

"Look on the bright side," Coach Buzzcut said, not looking up from the calculus powerpoint he was making. "He'll be fired for incompetency when he spikes the punch at this year's senior prom."

"What's the bet that Butt-Head doesn't kill him before the Sadie Hawkins dance?" Van Driessen groaned. The weekend seemed very far away. "Nobody tell him where Beavis's ashes are, or he'll find the urn and pee into it."

"Huh....where  _are_ his ashes?"

"We gave them to his mother." They'd cremated Beavis; Butt-Head had insisted on it as soon as he'd found out you could legally burn corpses. Beavis had always loved fire, anyway. 

"He had a mother?"

"We managed to track her down, yes. She works at the Merkin Lounge, and I had a hard time explaining what'd happened to her," Van Driessen replied. He grimaced at the memory. "She looks a lot like him. It's insane." After a moment of reflection, he added, "Seemed kinda scatterbrained. Butt-Head did voice suspicions that she'd turn up at his house in a couple of days and try to give the urn back because she'd think it was a jar full of tobacco ash, but I think that was just him feeling bitter."

"Oh, she gave it back alright," a quavery voice announced. Buzzcut and Van Dreissen craned their heads to see Cassandra swaying in the doorway, rolling her hands together.

"Cassandra." Van Driessen got to his feet. "What's up?"

"Oh, Butt-Head's crying in the library," she told him, her eyes huge and wild behind her glasses. "He says it's because Beavis's ashes are on the couch at home. He asked me not to tell." After a moment of reflection, she gasped and muttered, "Ooh, fiddlesticks."

Buzzcut shook his head and returned to his presentation. Van Driessen took a deep breath, reminded himself of the fiasco that had been the Piledrive For Charity Faculty Wrestling Tournament, and let it go.

"C'mon, Cassandra," he said, putting a hand on her sharp shoulder. "Show me where he is."

* * *

There's another thing about amputations that I never mentioned before. Yes, it's possible to fool yourself that the limb is still there, alive and pulsing at your shoulder. But eventually-

Mr. Van Driessen opened the door of the library, and when the sobbing reached his ears, he found this out for himself-

-the brain gives up, and says to itself, "There is no arm."

* * *

_I got good news_

_For people who love bad news...._

-Modest Mouse, "Bury Me With It".

 


	4. Mad As Hell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mr. Van Driessen really did have a brother called Tom who was killed during the Gulf War-he wrote a song about him in the tie-in book, "This Book Sucks". The song also reveals that Van Driessen's father "punched me out the day Tom died/ On a mission in Qatar." I'm not pulling this crazy shit out of my ass, guys, I swear.

"I should've gotten him to stand back a little more," Butt-Head muttered, and coughed. He'd stopped crying, but his voice was still raw with tears. 

Mr. Van Driessen put out his hand to pat his shoulder, but decided against it. They were wandering around town in his minibus; Butt-Head's breakdown in the library had been a quiet, smothered affair, but distress draws any animal, humans included. Van Driessen had taken him out to let him grieve in semi-privacy. Now they were trundling around the Highland suburbs, and he still didn't know what to do with this sullen mess of self-loathing.

Instead of touching him, he said, "You couldn't have known," and took another left, driving out into what passed as countryside in Highland.

Butt-Head sniffed. "Uh, I kind of did. I had this-this feeling in my stomach, and it made me know that there was something wrong." He peered at Van Driessen beneath lashes clumped together with salt. "Does that make sense?"

Van Driessen sighed. "It's called foreboding, or an omen. People get them all the time. It still doesn't mean any of this is your fault." Some hidden pustule inside his mind burst, and almost without awareness of it he added, "I felt something like that the day Tom died."

Butt-Head, like children everywhere, seized this hint of a teacher's humanity. "Who's Tom?"

Van Driessen took a breath and tapped his fingers on the wheel. "Hmm....I probably definitely shouldn't tell you this."

"I won't tell. I don't have anybody to tell anymore."

"Well, Tom was my brother." Van Driessen felt a lump gathering in his throat, which was ridiculous; Tom had been dead for so many years. He had to swallow it down before he could speak again. "He was in the Army during the Gulf War, and he got killed out there."

They drove on in silence. Butt-Head, Van Driessen knew, was chewing over this new information and trying as best as he could to understand it. He also knew that he would never hear him say, "I'm sorry for your loss", or any of the familiar old folderol his family had been subjected to. He was glad for this small mercy; he felt gratitude for the natural sociopathy of teenagers. A lot of the time, it was a blessing.

"Did he get captured by the bad guys and put to death?"

"There aren't any bad guys in war, Butt-Head. Just people with different ideas about how the world should work."  _And one of those people put an IED in the path of my big brother's jeep._ "Tom went out on a mission one day and never came back. Well, he did come back, I guess, but he never came home. Not really."

Butt-Head flopped back against the head-rest with an angry sigh. "Are you mad about it?"

Van Driessen tried to catch his eye, but they were on a rocky road just then, so he settled for the special timbre he used whenever he need to impart wisdom. "That's neither here nor there. What matters is that your feelings abot Beavis's death-whatever they may be-are valid. Anger, sadness, disbelief-they all count, Butt-Head. But you mustn't blame yourself for it, mmkay? It isn't what he'd have wanted, and it won't bring him back."

But in his head, as he swerved and braked to keep foxes and blackbirds safe from harm, that old snarl in his head started up again:  _Yes, I am mad about it. I am furious. I hate Tom for being in the army and I hate him for getting into the jeep that morning. I hate the hands that made that bomb and I know that they were probably the same age as you and I hate them anyway. I hate the guy who told my dad. I hate my dad for punching me out that day because I wept, I cried when they told us Tom was dead and even though Dad was crying too he let me have it. This is your heritage. If you don't get angry now, you'll be angry for the rest of your life. You might kill yourself when you're twenty because of this and I hate that_   _too_.

* * *

He dropped Butt-Head off at the trailer park where his uncle and cousins lived. Toddlers stared at the battered old van as they drew up, then giggled and ran away. People were hanging out washing and cooking dinner and sitting out on their porches with pitchers of Kool-Aid. Butt-Head opened the passenger door a crack and eased himself out. An old woman hollered a greeting to him, only she called him Benny. Nobody in the suburbs had called him that since kindergarten.

"Can I hope to see you at school tomorrow?" Van Dieissen asked him, as he reached out to smooth down the rumpled seat cover.

Butt-Head shrugged. "Uhh, I dunno. My big cousin Dale might drive me, but my uncle might need the car for a job in the morning, so...." He pulled a face which read, Don't count on it.

Van Driessen was about to say something else, but he got distracted by the front door of one of the shabbier trailers opening. A long, wiry man with a nose just like Butt-Head's and stains on his shirt stood in the dark gap.

"Benjamin Head!" he roared, loud enough to be heard clear across the park. People whipped their heads away, keeping their eyes fixed on points in the distance.

"Oh, boy," Butt-Head muttered. He slammed the passenger door shut behind him and took off, galloping towards the old trailer where the man stood waiting. The guy grabbed hold of his fleshless upper arm and yanked him inside, slamming the door in his wake.

Mr. Van Driessen waited a minute before pulling away.

He had lived in Highland since the day of his birth, and one cannot live in Highland for a very long time without learning its rotten ways. Some people-not just in the trailer park-thought of their children as property. Van Driessen had for years known of a family man who'd batter his kids whenever his boss made him feel small. Other folk in the town, still possessed of the prairie mentality, thought it better for their young 'uns to drop out and earn a living. Van Driessen remembered seeing good students bowed down with babies, working on construction sites, helping him with his gas on the forecourt. Too few of his charges had gone on to college.

And now it looked as though Butt-Head was about to become part of that same cycle.

As Van Driessen meandered back along the desert road, his mood dull and sour, he wondered if Butt-Head would even survive a job as a construction worker.

* * *

"That hippy guy with the van," Laurence Head growled, fishing around in the icebox for sandwich fixings. "He a friend of yours?"

"He's my teacher." Butt-Head, perched on the arm of the couch, knew to keep his answers short.

Laurence grinned, showing yellowed cigarette teeth. "You learnin' much in school? You makin' him proud?"

"I guess so, sir."

"No you're not." Laurence put the lid back on the icebox and stood up with a grunt. "Your mama showed me your report card. I seen methheads in the county supermax with better grades."

Butt-Head shrugged, and watched a fat bluebottle tap against the window. The atmosphere inside the trailer was close and smoky; the television was blaring some Bon Jovi music video. His gut twisted- _Beavis._

"Make yourself something to eat," Uncle Laurence was saying. He thrust a jar of unidentifiable spread and two slices of Wonder Bread into his numb hands. "I don't got time to babysit you, I gotta go out. Dale and Junior'll be back around six. Stay in the park, don't tell Jean Louise from two doors down to 'come to Butt-Head', and don't you _dare_ invite that damned Lanuzzi boy over like you did last summer."

"Todd can suck my weiner," Butt-Head spat. His eyeballs pulsed with a wild, inchoate rage that left him just as quickly.

His uncle stared for a moment, then rolled his own eyes. "Well, not right here he can't. Keep your nose clean while I'm gone." Off he went, letting the front door thud closed behind him.

Butt-Head got a plastic knife out of the rickety drawer in the kitchen unit. He dolloped a generous measure of the anonymous spread onto one of the slices, slammed the other down on top of it, and stuffed the whole thing into his mouth. He sat back onto the right-side end of the couch, not taking his eyes off the music video.

His brain filled in the rest: Beavis, sitting to his left, unseen but most certainly there, hooting, "Yeah, yeah, yeah! Cool!" 

For memory's sake, he garbled, "Settle down, Beavis," through his mouthful of sandwich. But he didn't want him to settle down; he wanted him to be so loud and bright that the recollection would become reality, and Beavis would be sat down beside him again, doing what they liked best.

* * *

_Decisions are made and not bought_

_But I thought that this wouldn't hurt a lot_

_I guess not._

_-_ from "Kids" by MGMT.

 


	5. And The Band Geeks Played On

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "chocolate laxatives" incident mentioned in this chapter is canon, as is the "teachers' lounge turned into bombsite" thing. The part where these ridiculous kids ate a bunch of plastic and candle wax, etc., is just something I made up.

Okay, so, how the fuck did the funeral go? That's the sixty-four million dollar question, folks. That's the one we all want answered.

Well, it went crap, okay? Butt-Head turned up in his Burger World uniform because it was the only clean set of clothes he had, the undertakers had slapped all this gunk on Beavis's face so that it didn't even look like him anymore, the pastor couldn't stop snickering as he read the sermon, Stewart got called up to give the eulogy and he totally puked all over the podium, and then Butt-Head woke up the next morning in an empty house with the windows smashed and the microwave gone. Also, pinkeye. He'd contracted pinkeye.

And that's why Butt-Head spent a month at his uncle's place-a little bit because of the crushing loneliness, but mostly because Laurence Head worked at a pharmacist and could get free eyedrops any time he liked.

So, yeah.

Back to the story.

* * *

Butt-Head got to go to school the next morning; his big cousin Dale drove him in. Dale was a rock-shaped guy, a man of few words and many punches. An electronic bracelet on his ankle blinked its red light at steady ten-second intervals throughout the drive, reminding both him and Butt-Head of an altercation in a Taco Yummo parking lot six months previously.

"Bastard had it comin'," Dale muttered, whitening his knuckles on the steering wheel.

"Uh, whatever you say, Dale."

Dale hissed and shot him a rattlesnake glare. "Hey, I'm not your dead boyfriend. You ain't king of no-one's castle anymore, you hear?"

Butt-Head nodded, keeping his eyes trained on Dale's ear.

"When I talk, you don't pass comments. You  _listen,_ God damn it." Dale fumed in silence for a moment, then grunted. "Ah, what the fuck. You ain't all there."

"I, uh, I guess I'm not."

This earned him a tight-lipped, humourless grin. "You don't have a clue what I'm talking about. Here's your stop, anyhow. Run on into school and get your education."

Butt-Head hopped out of the truck and ran on into school. Whether or not he'd get his education was anyone's guess, but at least he'd made it through the doors.

* * *

 Butt-Head had always found homeroom a relief. When your gym coach wants to kill you, your principal slugs whiskey every time you walk through his door, and your biology teacher blames you for the renaissance of creationist thought, a member of faculty who _doesn't_ hate you is a pleasant surprise.

The classroom was empty, save for Mr. Van Driessen; all the others were still at their lockers.

"Hey, Benjamin," Van Driessen said, by way of greeting. 

Butt-Head scowled, and made no reply.

"Forgive me; I heard people calling you that at the park. I just thought it would be nice to not have to insult you every time I called the roll."

Butt-Head showed him all his teeth. "First name's Butt. Second name's Head. Nobody's ever had a problem with it before."

"Do you?"

Butt-Head plunked his books on the ground beneath his chair, keeping his back turned to Van Dreissen. His words, when he spoke, seemed to reverberate from the walls. "Hey, 's my name. Beavis gave it to me." A little wobble on the dead boy's name was the only sign of grief. If you only cared to glance, then Butt-Head was fine-quieter and more stilted than usual, but unaffected. Mr. Van Driessen knew it was a bullshit preseumption.

"Why'd you change it? I remember everybody calling you Benny back in kindergarten." He would've smiled at the memory, but they'd been little hell-raisers back then as well. Chocolate laxatives, sweet Jesus.... "And Beavis was Billy. Benny and Billy the tag team."

Butt-Head finally craned his neck to face him. To Van Dreissen's surprise, he was smiling-a genuine, limited-edition sunbeam of an effort. "Miss Cramb used to call us Ottis Toole and Henry Lee Lucas. We didn't get the joke until fourth grade."

Van Driessen's stomach fell away from him. "Butt-Head....that's not as funny as you think it is. Miss Cramb said that to you guys in  _kindergarten?"_

"She sure did! Why isn't it funny?"

"Well....they were criminals. Don't you think it's a little mean to compare two little kids to a pair of murderers?"

Butt-Head's mouth shrank back to its usual scowl. "Uhh....no."

Van Driessen sighed, rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Tell you what, why don't I give you a lift home after school? You and me can talk about this a little better."

Butt-Head considered it for a moment, then rolled his shoulders. "Hell, I could prob'ly use a lift. Would you take me back to my house, though?"

"Won't your folks miss you?"

Butt-Head's eyes went vacant, as though he was watching a movie in his head. "No, sir. They don't miss much."

His classmates were filing in. Not wanting to make him a bigger goat than he already was, Van Driessen motioned him to sit down and searched for the roll book.

"Okay, people," he announced, when they'd all settled down. "I feel, somehow, that we're not connecting with the passing of our compatriot as we should be." He paused to gauge the reaction. The faces in front of him were mostly blank, save for Cassandra (cagey concern), Stewart (face contorted in order to suppress tears), and Butt-Head (cold fury, of course).

Van Driessen pulled a thick folder from his desk drawer; the pages had gone soft with age. On the front, Principal McVicker's scrawl read, "William Beavis + Benjamin Head - Serious Incidents". The thing smelled of dust and whiskey, and had been part of the boys' scholastic careers since their preschool days. Their own parents couldn't have told their story better.

"Class, what I have here is a comprehensive list of every dreadful act of carnage committed by Beavis (and by extension, Butt-Head) since elementary school. It's unorthodox, but I don't think Beavis would have wanted to be remembered with sadness and regret." He sounded out every word, as was his habit, so that even the sleepyheads and the overexcited would hear. "This file represents everything he was proud of. His life's work is contained herein." He eased himself up onto the desktop. "Let's start with a classic, shall we?"

Backs across the room straightened. Doodles of genitalia lay unfinished. Some of the hostility leached away from Butt-Head's face, to be replaced by a tint of wonder.

Mr. Van Driessen suppressed a smile. Turning to the middle section, he began to read:

"The fifth of September, 1983: Chocolate laxatives disguised as regular chocolate given out to peers at kindergarten. Seventeen cases of prolonged diarrhea; one case involved overnight stay at hospital."

"That was Beavis," Butt-Head piped up, amid snickers. "He ate a whole bunch of laxatives by mistake. When the nurse, like, saw him at the hospital? And all the mess he was making? She wouldn't stop screaming. She works as a librarian now."

Mr. Van Driessen shook his head and read out the next entry. "The twelfth of October, 1983: Ingested no fewer than five worms apiece. Assorted household items also consumed include: a candle eaten from both ends like in 'Lady and the Tramp'; an Action Man figurine; one whole pebble from the pot purri bowl."

"I remember you and him comin' into the hospital to get pumped out, Butt-Head," Earl said, twisting around in his seat to grin at him. "My mom let me keep the Action Man's head when it came out of you."

"Yeah....I kinda miss being a kid," Butt-Head reflected. Cassandra put her hand on his, and squeezed it to bring him back. He shook his head and blessed them all with his rare, bare-gummed smile.

Mr. Van Driessen read on, skimming through the entries: "Teachers' lounge reduced to bombsite....gay fetish pornography downloaded onto all the school computer servers....hold on, this one's just a phonetic transcription of Principal McVicker screaming."

At a quarter to eight, the bell rang for the end of class. Mr. Van Driessen waved the kids out, feeling lighter around his shoulders and heart.

A small figure detached itself from the river of students, stood in front of his desk, and mumbled, "Uhhhhhhhhh, thank you." And vanished back into the crowd. 

 Van Driessen could only stare after Butt-Head and blink, wondering if-God help them all-he'd gained the boy's trust.

* * *

When he left the building at half-past three, he thought Butt-Head had forgotten, or changed his mind. Teenage boys are, as "O Fortuna" calls Fate,  _variabilis._

But then a grey-red person ran across the deserted parking lot, yanked open the passenger door of the minibus two seconds after Van Driessen unlocked it, hopped inside, and yanked it shut. 

"Hey, hey, hey," Van Driessen warned, swinging himself into the driver's seat. "There's no need to rush. I wouldn't break a promise."

"I-I know," Butt-Head panted. After he caught his breath, he added, "So, uh, you were gonna talk to me about stuff."

"Hmm. Yes, yes I was." The engine started up with an octogenarian-sounding grumble. Van Driessen patted the dashboard to soothe the old beast and eased it out of the space, trying and failing to keep an eye on both the rearview mirror and his stormy-faced passenger as he did so. "Well, let's go back to what you said to me earlier. Why is it okay to call a little kid a serial killer?"

"Ehhhhh...." Butt-Head doodled little circles on the window-ledge with his finger. "I guess if the kid pretty much  _was_ a serial killer? Then it'd be okay. Me and Beavis were real bad back in kindergarten."

"Butt-Head, please. A few cases of diarrhea does not equal a statewide murder spree. I mean, yes, your behaviour left a little to be desired. But I always thought you were good kids."

"Huh?" Butt-Head gave him a look of puzzlement usually reserved for algebra. "How?"

Van Driessen kept an eye on the road as he thought through his answer. "Oh, it was more of a general impression. The pair of you were never mean, never bullied anybody. Most of the time, you just sat at the back of the class and played with the blocks. Quiet as mimes, too. I think you hung around with Stewart a lot."

"The thing with the laxatives-"

"-Was a lapse in judgement, and you both apologised. Come on, Butt-Head. You're more than your mistakes."

After a brief, meditative silence, Butt-Head mused, 'We rag on Stewart a lot. We're not very nice to him. Every time Beavis goes over to his house, he steals food and superhero dolls 'n stuff."

Clearly, he'd given up on the past tense. "Oh? And why aren't you nice to him?"

"Ehh....I dunno. He just isn't as cool as he used to be. Or maybe we got cooler."

"Would you like to rectify your attitude towards him?"

Blank expression.

"Would you like to be nicer to him, I mean," Van Driessen translated.

Butt-Head puffed out a world-weary sigh. "Huh. I prob'ly should make an effort to do that, since him and Cassandra are looking out for me now."

"Yeah, I saw that." Pause to feel the way forward. "How does that make you feel?"

The doodling finger went still on the ledge, then slithered off. "A little bit better. Like I got a boat in the middle of a really big ocean, with huge waves on it like in _Titantic."_

"So, security."

"I guess." Butt-Head sank back into silence, and Van Dreissen knew that he'd get nothing more out of him for the duration.

When they got to the house, it looked even more battered than it had before. Butt-Head mumbled "Thank you, drive through," like an automaton, and shuffled out.

Van Driessen watched the broken house and its broken inhabitant shrink in his mirror as he drove away. 

* * *

_"Hey, Beavis....?"_

_"Yeah?"_

_"....Think **we'll** ever die....?"_

_"No way! We're, like, immoral...."_

\- from the comic "MTV's Beavis and Butt-Head", issue #2.

 


	6. We Plough And Scatter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "carear verjun" (career virgin) signs Daria mentions were a comic thing; throughout the series, you can occasionally see hurtful signage taped to the back of Daria's chair. It's unlikely that Beavis and Butt-Head were the culprits; the concept of such an insult is too advanced for them. Besides, they weren't that fuckin' mean, y'know?
> 
> The whole Daria-in-a-box thing, by the way, comes from the episode "Boxing Daria".

The urn was where Butt-Head had left it-lying on Beavis's side of the couch. He sat beside it and picked it up. It was small and squat, and cold to touch, like a stone imitation of a toad. It had a few dovelike shapes stencilled on the side. He hugged it to his chest until his heart bumped against the clay, and he didn't know what to do. 

The phone rang.

He put what was left of the love of his life on the cushion and went to answer it.

When he picked up the receiver and held it to his ear, no-one spoke. But he could hear the faint rushiness of breath on the other end, and so he waited.

After ten heartbeats, he swallowed and asked, "Is this, like, a prank call? 'Cos I really don't need that sort of thing right now."

The breathing gathered to a sigh. A familiar monotone said, "I just don't know what to say."

"Woah-Daria? Is that you?" Butt-Head's knees gave out; he slithered down the wall into a half-sitting position, with the telephone cord spiralling above his head. "Uhh....hi."

"Hello, Butt-Head." He could hear her pale attempt at a smile. "Mr. Van Driessen called me a month or so ago with the news. I'm sorry I didn't come to the funeral."

"Why didn't you?"

"Oh....just a perfect storm of bullshit excuses. Mom and Dad thought it'd mess me up psychologically. I said that you were probably doing way worse than they could imagine, but they still think all those 'carear verjun' signs were your doing."

"They weren't."

"I know, Butt-Head. That's what I told them."

"I mean, it's not your fault you're kinda flat-"

"Butt-Head, come on." The reprimand was unusually gentle. "We're skating around the elephant in the room here. Are you getting on okay?"

"Ehh....I dunno. Daria, I have a question."

"Ask away."

"What are some good things to do with an urn with ashes in it?"

Shocked silence.

"I mean, I have this one on the couch right now," Butt-Head continued, blithe as ever, "but I don't think it's the right place for it."

Daria made a sound like she was choking. "Umm, er, um. Okay. Maybe you could put it on a shelf in your room? I'd suggest a mantelpiece, but I don't recall seeing one the last time you guys had me over."

"I don't even know what a piece of mantel is," Butt-Head replied, plucking at his braces. "Shelf in my room-got it. But, y'know, I don't want to keep him there forever. Is it legal to, like, toss dead people around?"

"You mean scattering ashes?" Now it sounded as though she was smirking. "Of course it is. Have you anywhere in mind?"

Butt-Head wound some of the cord around his finger. "Do you wanna come over this Saturday to help me think of a place?"

"I guess it's the least I can do. I might as well pay my last respects to that kid. Can I bring along a friend?"

"Go ahead. I'll, uhh, tell Cassandra and Stewart."

"I'll meet you outside the school at ten," Daria told him. "Promise me you'll stay safe, okay?"

Butt-Head didn't like lying to Daria, so he just grunted a farewell and hung up.

* * *

Stewart arrived at the designated meeting-point at a quarter to ten. Cassandra and Butt-Head were already there; Butt-Head was kicking rocks around, and Cassandra was reading a book. Butt-Head was holding Beavis's urn as though it were the One Ring.

"Hey, guys," Stewart called. "When did Daria say she was getting here?"

"Ten o'clock," Butt-Head replied. "Oh, and she's, like, bringing one of her Lawndale friends with her."

Cassandra blew air through her nose and turned a page. "If they make fun of us, I'm bailing. I'm bailing like a sailor in a rowboat made of paper."

Stewart frowned at her. "Just because their water doesn't have uranium in it doesn't mean that they won't be nice, Cass."

"I really wanna see Daria again, though," Butt-Head added. "Uranium or no uranium. Hey, me and Beavis went swimming by the nuclear reactor one time. Beavis's poop was orange for a month."

"I went swimming there once," Stewart remembered. "My hair fell out in big clumps. I had to go to the big hospital in Houston."

"My dad went swimming there," Cassandra said. "Now I have a stepdad. Hey-is that them now?"

* * *

"You know," Jane chirped, "I've always wanted to see the town that made Daria Morgendorffer. I mean, it's your Krypton."

"More like Kryptonite," Daria droned, staring at the scenery as they sped along the dirt road. "You think Lawndale's bad, but at least Principal Li doesn't keep a bottle of Jack Daniels in her desk."

"That we know of," Jane snarked. "So, who's the guy we're scattering again?"

"Just call him Beavis when you talk about him. I was in his class from kindergarten up until last year. He was playing around with a firework in September, and...."

"Darwin's Law?" Jane supplied, taking a sharp left turn.

Something about the idea left a bad taste in Daria's mouth. "It was an accident. He wasn't the brightest candle on the chandelier, but he didn't deserve it." As an afterthought, she added, "It's not him you have to worry about, though."

"Oh, yeah?" Jane was trying to negotiate the local potholes, and was distracted. "Who's the Big Kahuna?"

They were nearing the Highland High parking lot. All of a sudden, a vaguely human-shaped blur leapt out in front of the car. Screams assaulted their ears as Jane stomped the brakes.

Butt-Head wobbled to his feet and limped back to Stewart and Cassandra, whose hands were at their mouths. Stewart bent over and spat out vomit.

"Him," Daria announced, unblinking. The only evidence of the incident's effect on her was the now-oblique angle of her glasses. She fixed them, and scowled. 'He's the Big Kahuna. Don't let him get you alone."

* * *

 Daria looked healthier than he remembered-thick hair that shone in the sun, bit of colour to her skin, nicer clothes. The girl with her didn't look like any chick he'd seen before, with her triple piercing and wicked blue eyes.

"Uh," he said, addressing the newcomer. "Sorry for, like, frightening you."

"Hey, ain't no thing," the girl replied. She had an agreeable, slightly muffled voice, as though she were chewing on something tasty. "If I had a dollar for every time a kid's run out in front of my car, I'd be able to trade the damn thing in for a Lear jet."

"But would kids still run out in front of you?" Butt-Head asked, smiling in spite of himself. 

The girl grinned back.

"Only if some freak mutation gave them all wings," she replied, and stuck out her hand. "Jane Lane."

"Uhh...." Butt-Head took the proffered hand and sort of flopped it about. "My name's Butt-Head."

"Yeesh. What'd you do to deserve  _that?"_

He held up the urn. "This guy gave it to me. It stuck."

"Wait, this is the dude we're scattering?" Jane Lane took the urn from him and turned it around in her hands, grimacing. "This pot is an artistic travesty. It isn't worthy of the guy who gave a kid a brand-new name. We're gonna be doing him one heck of a favour."

Daria appeared just then, having caught up with Stewart and Cassandra.

"I told you," she said to Jane, "don't let him get you alone. It's only a matter of time before he destroys every boundary you've ever set and ruins your self-esteem." 

"Hey, Daria," said Butt-Head. He didn't know what to do, but he'd heard good things about hugs. He unfurled his arms, caught her by the shoulders, and reeled her in before she could wriggle back. She huffed a sigh against his chest, but she didn't pull away.

"That's kind of sweet," Cassandra cooed, trotting over with Stewart. "I think Butt-Head missed you, Daria!" 

"I know this," Daria mumbled. She reached around and rubbed Butt-Head's shoulder in slow, concentric circles. To him, she whispered, "It's alright. You'll be okay."

"It, uh, it doesn't feel like that right now," Butt-Head murmured back. The monstrous grief that had consumed him in the first few weeks after burying Beavis roared again.

"Just remember that nothing can be this bad forever," Daria told him, "and breathe." She slipped out of his arms and turned to Stewart. "We'd better start scouting for a good place to scatter him. Anybody got any ideas?"

"Well," Stewart said, screwing up his forehead in thought, "he really liked playing baseball in the field around the water tower."

"Nice open space, too," Cassandra added. "But it's up to you, Butt-Head. He was your best friend."

Butt-Head took the urn from Jane and traced the smooth clay with his thumb. A memory came to him like a cinder, bright and thin: him and Beavis playing frog baseball at the height of summer, wrung out with sweat and spattered with entrails and blood. Beavis would leer at him and shriek demented encouragement-"C'mon baby c'mon here batter batter batter you can do it go on go on," and pitch the frogskin just as he was distracted with the "baby" part.

"Yeah, that's a good spot," he decided. In his head, he thought,  _Billy, what in the hell have you done to me now?_

* * *

"Uhh," Butt-Head said. "We should probably, like, scatter him now."

They'd driven to the field in Jane's car. Now, they were standing on its edge, staring at the scrub.

"I think the moment calls for some ceremony," Cassandra argued. She'd brought some flowers to lay out; the pollen was making Stewart's eyes stream. "I mean, it's not as though we're getting rid of yard clippings. We have to say something."

"You're the same stickler for useless dogma that you were a year ago, Cassandra," Daria monotoned, gazing across the dirt. "But I agree. We can't just toss Beavis around like confetti and go home."

"Butt-Head should say a couple of words," Stewart wheezed, "and then I'll lead us in prayer."

The others murmured their assent, and looked at Butt-Head. 

He took a deep breath, choked on it, got it back, and tried to get his thoughts in order. 

"Uhh....Beavis was, uh, my best friend. I can't even remember the day we met. But I have pictures of us sittin' together in our diapers, so, uh, yeah. We go pretty far back."

He paused to gulp down air, to steady himself.

"He liked settin' stuff on fire, and nachos, and having a good time."

"A man of simple tastes," Jane chimed in.

"Yeah....'cept he wasn't a man. He was a little kid, and he wasn't stupid like a lot of people thought. He just took a little more time to get stuff than usual." He sighed, and stroked his thumb along the urn. "Uhh....you can, like, pray now, Stewart."

Stewart led them all in a rambling, coughy rendition of the Lord's Prayer; and then it was time to scatter the ashes.

"Hold on," Daria said, as Butt-Head unscrewed the lid. "We should all stand upwind. I liked Beavis a lot, but I don't want to breathe in his remains."

So they stood so that their hair blew in front of their faces, and Butt-Head sprinkled the contents of the urn into the breeze. The gritty grey cloud billowed and dispersed like so many seeds, settling on leaves and dirt.

As a final gesture, Butt-Head smashed the urn to the ground and jumped on it until it shattered. Jane nodded at this, pleased with the destruction of substandard art.

"Beavis always loved to break things," he explained to her, as they trooped back to the car.

* * *

A while later, when Stewart and Cassandra had gone home and Jane, Daria and Butt-Head were wandering around Highland, a large cardboard box blew into the road. Jane hissed and, for the second time that day, slammed the brakes.

"Oh, look," said Daria, unpertubed. "A large box that's just the right size for about two teenagers to fit into sitting down."

Jane rolled her eyes. "You _cannot_ be serious. Don't drag Butt-Head into this."

"Oh, but I am. And I'm going to." Daria opened the passenger door and got out, closed it, went around to the backseat door, and held it open for their friend.

Butt-Head wriggled out, feeling dull and confused. "Ehh....I don't get it."

"Daria has this thing where she crawls into cardboard boxes whenever she's upset," Jane told him, leaning across the front seats. "Now she wants someone to share the crazy with."

"Self-imposed isolation is a recognised coping mechanism," Daria growled. She led Butt-Head away by the hand, with Jane's crackling laughter floating in the high wind behind them. She snatched the box from the road and dragged it along with them. Her expression was one of steel-capped determination, of rusted grief.

She laid the box down flat on a grassy culvert and wriggled inside. Butt-Head, after a moment of hesitation, crawled in after her and pulled the flaps shut.

Three beats of silence. Then, Daria's voice, disembodied in the dark:

"When I was a little kid, my parents got called into school a lot because I never spoke to the other kids. They'd fight about it, and whenever that happened, I'd crawl into this refrigerator box that I kept in my room."

"Me and Beavis usedta talk to you," Butt-Head reminded her. "You liked us."

"I know." Daria went quiet for a moment, thinking. "I never mentioned you guys. I was afraid you wouldn't count. But....thank you."

"I don't think we were ever that nice to you, anyway," Butt-Head murmured, doodling on the cardboard with his finger. "Callin' you 'Diarrhea' and stuff. That was, uh, that was only us having fun."

Daria made a vague motion with her hand. "I wasn't that great to you guys, either. To be brutally honest, I still cringe whenever I remember that idiotic experiment I did with you guys back in eighth grade. I mean, I went to your house, ate your nachos, watched your TV, and then I went into school and humiliated you both in front of the whole class."

"....We didn't mind." Butt-Head conjured up the documentary voice he hadn't used since the night Beavis died: "Science has no room for human emotion!"

Daria breathed out, slow and steady, and said, "Benny, you have too many people putting you down to do the same thing. Don't help the people who hate you."

He froze when he heard his old baby-nickname, which he hadn't heard in a suburban context for a decade.

"I guessed that Todd sold you both that firework," Daria continued, not seeing his shock. "Do me a favour-don't go near that asshole anymore. He belittles you, he beats you up, and he should be on your knees washing your feet. You hear me?"

"I never wanna see him again," Butt-Head told her. That dreadful, snaking hatred, coiled forever in his belly, hissed and spat. 

A gentle hand patted him. "There's the spirit. That all-consuming despise will do you some good. You know, I think you've made a lot of progress-I've kept you in a cardboard prison long enough."

They got out and brushed themselves off. Jane pulled up, leaning on the horn.

"Hey, Dia-um, Daria?"

"Hmm?"

"That girl. Jane. Do you love her?"

Daria leaned back an iota. "Er, yeah. I suppose I do. She's my best friend."

"Good. Tell her so. Not tonght, not tomorrow-the second you get in the car."

"That's....that's nice, but why?"

"I loved Billy," he told her, "I loved him so much it drove me crazy, and he never knew. 'Cos I never, like, told him so."

Behind her thick glasses, Daria's eyes were liquid with pity. "He....I know he put on a front, but he understood a lot of stuff about people. He knew, Butt-Head. And he loved you, too, just as much."

Butt-Head didn't trust himself to speak-his throat was swelling with tears-so he turned and ran, not stopping until he'd reached the dilapidated house of his youth, the house where nobody was waiting for him to come home.

* * *

_Things change fast; this too shall pass_

_You better carve it on your forehead or tattoo it on your ass_

_'Cos who can tell, when the clock strikes twelve,_

_If today's become tomorrow_

_Or if it's all just gone to Hell._

-from "This Too Shall Pass" by Danny Schmidt.

 

 


	7. Listen To The Voices If You Wanna Live

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The whole "TV getting stolen" thing Butt-Head rants about in this chapter is a reference to the events of "Beavis and Butt-Head Do America".

After Daria and Jane had vroomed back down the road, back to Lawndale and their graceful lives, Butt-Head sloped inside the house and slammed the door behind him.

His feet took him into the bathroom. His hands opened the mirrored cabinet above the sink. Nerveless, they groped around inside and withdrew several ancient, scuffed bottles filled with various medicines. He chose an old bottle of Ambien tablets that hadn't been opened since 1989. Ten lozenges gleamed through the plastic; he shook them out and stared at them.

How long he stood there, he couldn't say. The world blurred at the edges of his vision; there was only him and a handful of poison and white noise buzzing in his brain. 

"Billy," he croaked, "I don't know what to do."

His voice didn't sound like it came from a living person. He had one foot in the grave; all he had to do was ease the rest of himself in and be done with it.

In his febrile, trembling mind, he thought he heard someone giggle.

_Uh, Butt-Head? Don't, like, take this the wrong way? But what you're doing is really dumb._

"I miss you real bad....this is how they do it on TV, right?"

_You assmunch. Those things are a million years old or something! You'll have to have your stomach pumped again! That sucked, remember?_

"Uhh....they wouldn't find me for weeks."

 _You're, like, terrible at lying._ Beavis sounded way too cheerful, given that he was dead. If he - or even the hallucination of him - was happy, then Butt-Head could be happy, too. They were a team; that was how it worked.

"Okay, so, maybe I don't wanna do it just yet," Butt-Head whispered. The fuzziness behind his eyes crept back; the back of his mouth didn't taste of vomit anymore. "Tell me what to do, Beavis, 'cos I'm all outta ideas here."

_They'll come back. You're just too down right now to, like, think of any. Here, I'll get you started: who likes you enough to let you stay over for the night?_

"Uhh....Daria, Cassandra, Stewart, and Mr. Van Driessen."

_Stewart's parents hate us, Cassandra's stepdad is real creepy, and Daria lives too far away. So, that leaves Mr. Van Driessen. Tough break, dude._

"Beavis, if you don't shut your mouth, I'm gonna shut it for you," Butt-Head snapped. "I forgot where he lives, anyway."

_No, you haven't. Remember when we accidentally washed his eight tracks because we thought they were dishes? Remember that house?_

Butt-Head did, indeed, remember that house. It had not been his proudest moment.

 _There ya go._ Beavis's voice was fading, but he still sounded fucking smug.  _And, Butt-Head? Just a tip, but you might wanna go there, like, right now, because a dead guy is talking to you. And that's a bad thing._

* * *

"My God," Mr. Van Driessen exclaimed, clutched at the doorframe for support. "Are you Butt-Head, or just a really big drowned rat?"

It was pouring outside, the kind of driving rain that you're not supposed to get in Texas. Butt-Head had walked three blocks in it. Van Driessen could see his ribs through his t-shirt; his signature pompadour had been flattened into a crazed short-back-and-sides affair (minus the sides). Nonetheless, the boy was bouyant.

"Hey, howzit goin'?" he asked, sticking his hands into his slick pockets. "Beavis said I should stay at your place for the night."

The teacher stared at him. "As in, before he died, or just now?"

"Just now," the child replied, breezy as anything.

Van Driessen stood aside. "Well, I can't send you home in this weather. The bathroom's down the hall. Get into the shower and I'll throw you some a change of clothes through the door, mmkay?"

Butt-Head coughed out a sad imitation of his once-robust chuckle and sloped in, dripping water like a skinny, mobile fountain. "Uh, thanks," he tossed over his shoulder, as he slithered into the bathroom.

Van Driessen shut the door, slid down the wall until he could slide no further, and put his head in his hands.

In his ten-year-long teaching career, he had dealt with the death of a student only once before. A car accident had taken away a particular loner's best friend. The boy had soldiered on as best as he could for six months; then, all of a sudden, his dead friend had started talking to him again. The whole affair had not ended well for anyone concerned.

For a few minutes, the loudest sound in the house was Butt-Head's cross murmuring as he tried to work out how the shower worked. A second later, the quick, steady hum of water drowned him out.

Van Driessen got to his feet, feeling as though someone had filled his veins with cement. He retrieved his least favourite shirt and pants from the linen closet, yanked open the door, and threw them in without looking. Butt-Head didn't notice - he was busy working his way through Iron Maiden's back catalogue. His voice, as always, surprised its reluctant audience with its strength and melody. He was a fine, if untrained, baritone.

About a half-hour later, Butt-Head sauntered out of the bathroom with his old clothes oin his arms. Divested of them, clad in an ancient dress shirt three sizes too big and a ridiculous pair of chinos, he looked like a little boy playing dress-up in his father's closet.

"Hey," Mr. Van Driessen called. He threw a hand-towel at him. "Wrap this around your hair to keep it from dripping, and give me those things."

"Uhh....I'll get 'em back, right?"

"Of course you will. I'm only washing them for you. But you have other clothes, right? You were wearing one of Stewart's old camp shirts two weeks ago."

"Yeeeaaaaaah....but these are my favourites." Butt-Head glimpsed the TV in the living room and trotted towards it, as single-minded as a baby with a breast. Van Driessen shook his head at him and went to dump the filthy rags he'd foisted on him in the wash - although he would've preferred to throw them in the trash and be done with it.

His mind was all a-flurry. Jeanette Winterson defines a surprise as "an expected thing in an unexpected place, or an unexpected thing in an unexpected place". Here was Butt-Head, a constant of one context, in Van Driessen's house, a constant of another. It was like seeing a fish grazing in a field, or a heron on the freeway.

He followed his bizarre guest into the living room; he'd already managed to seek out MTV, and was watching with his bony knees pointed screenwards and his wet hair twisted into a turban. Van Driessen snuck up behind him, grabbed the remote, and turned off the set.

Butt-Head swung around, brow furrowing, but Van Dreissen got a word in before he could open his mouth to protest. "You're in my house now, kiddo. I decide when the TV gets turned off. We need to have a talk."

"A....a talk?" Butt-Head's sulky eyes clouded with fear.

"Yep." Van Driessen sat down at the other end of the couch and tried to remember the "Reaching Troubled Teens" seminar he'd dozed through back in college. "When you arrived, you said that Beavis told you to come here. Could you tell me a little more about that?"

Butt-Head twisted his fingers. "Uhh....nothing much to tell."

"What were you doing when he started talking to you?"

The boy seemed to retreat inside himself, like a mental tortoise. Van Driessen tried repeating the question, tried yelling it, tried shaking him a little, even - and nothing brought him back. Frightened, he ran into the kitchen to get the phone. He wasn't sure if this counted as an emergency, but maybe the guy at the other end of the 911 line would know what to do with catatonic children.

"Killing myself," someone croaked, as he dialled the first one.

Van Driessen hooked the receiver back into its cradle and turned around. There was Butt-Head, stark and waifish in the yellow kitchen light, rocking back and forth on his tiny bare feet. His eyes were holes in a living skull.

The teacher strode across the tiles and grasped his upper arm to keep him from falling. "Say that again?"

"I was," Butt-Head began, and stopped to cough. "I was gonna kill myself, like they do on TV? There was a bottle of medicine my mom used to, like, take to make her tired. I....I had 'em in my hand....and then Beavis started talkin' about how stupid I was being."

Van Dreissen only took a moment to process this. He dragged Butt-Head over to the table, yanked out a chair, and pushed him into it. He kept a hand on him to keep him from toppling and whispered, "Benjamin, this is important. How much of the medicine did you take?"

Even though he was half-drunk with exhaustion and whatever trauma his brain was tottering through, Butt-Head still had it in him to scowl. "None. Duh. Beavis stopped me."

"I don't know about that." Van Driessen tested his temperature with the back of his hand. "You don't look well at all."

"Just tired 'sall," Butt-Head murmured. He attempted, twice, to put his head on Van Driessen's shoulder. "Been a long day....it's been tough. We, uh, we scattered the ashes today? And Daria came? It was cool to see her, but then it, like, sucked."

"Why did it suck? Did it make you sad?"

" _Sad?"_ Butt-Head snorted and folded his arms. "Nothing makes us sad. We're, like,  _invisible."_

"Then why did you say that it sucked?" Van Driessen pressed. "Did something throw you off, make you feel bad?"

Butt-Head tried to think about it. He put his arms on the table to serve as a pillow for his head; the teacher let him. The kid was obliging him by making an effort-for him, trying to remember emotional triggers was the same as any other student attempting calculus problems.

"Daria...." he mumbled.

"Mmhmm?"

"She's, like, better than us now....not 'cos of money - even if she is rich - but, uh, happier? I mean, she has two parents, and I don't even know where my mom is." He picked at his braces. "And she has this cool new friend, and they love each other. They got, like, real nice clothes, and fun things to do after school, prob'ly."

"Has it ever bothered you before, that you don't have all that stuff?"

"I usedta have Beavis." Butt-Head kept his eyes on the tabletop. "But he's, like, gone, I guess....and now I notice all that stuff. It's, um....what's that saying? About the straw? And the sand-horse thingy?"

"The straw that broke the camel's back?"

"Yeah." Butt-Head sighed and pulled a face. "I must sound like such a _girl_ right now."

"What? Of course you don't. You sound like _you,_ going through a rough time." Van Driessen put out his hand to him, but couldn't work up the courage to pat him on the shoulder. He left it on the table between them and asked, "How you ever felt this way in the past?"

Tired silence.

"Like....how about when all that trouble happened with the government?" he prompted. "Remember?"

Butt-Head twisted his lip into a snarl. "I dunno about the government. Me and Beavis just wanted our TV back." He barked out a bitter laugh. "Two assmunch pieces of tornado bait broke into our house while we was sleepin' and stole our fuckin' TV. Microwave's broke. Refrigerator's broke. Not even the sink works right. The TV was the only thing that'd switch on properly, an' they took it. An', an' you know what the worst thing was? When we came back into Highland after all that trouble - Beavis was real sick, sunburnt all over - and guess where we found our damn TV? On the side of the road. They'd thrown it away. It was, like, worthless to them."

This outburst seemed to drain him; all the fury seeped out of his eyes, and he went back to his mindless braces-picking. Van Driessen didn't know what to say to all this.

He settled on avoiding the matter: "You wanna watch music videos with me for a little while?"

It was as though he'd reached into that misshapen skull and turned on all the lights.

"You're, like, serious? Woah. Yeah, I'd like that." 

* * *

Butt-Head fell alseep thirty seconds into "Smells Like Teen Spirit", so Van Driessen didn't get to sample his legendary snarking skills. He switched off the set, went to find a blanket, and tucked it around the limp little body sprawled all across his couch.

His conscience wouldn't let him leave the kid alone, so he settled down in an armchair for the night and watched Butt-Head twitch and mumble through his dreams. He was a restless, energetic sleeper; at intervals, a leg would kick out, or an arm would toss itself over the cushions. He'd click his tongue, make cod-scat sounds with his bow-shaped mouth. Beavis got the occasional mention in the neverending stream-of-unconsciousness babble.

Van Driessen fell asleep to it, without meaning to. When he woke up, he found himself alone. A frenzied search revealed that the house was empty apart from him. What's more, Butt-Head's sodden t-shirt and shorts no longer disgraced the laundry-basket.

A note had been stuck to the fridge with the corny "You Know You're A Texan If...." magnet. The words scrawled across the Post-It were near-illegible, but there was no mistaking their sincerity:

_Deer Mr. Van Dreesen. I hope this note finds yoo wel. I am reel madd at Tod rite now becaz of what hapenned with Beavis. I will cahm intwo school on time. Thank yoo very mutch for your ~~jenna~~   ~~grenner~~   ~~generess~~ kindness. I am sorry I had to leave, but a man has gotta do what a man has gotta do._

_Yours faytfuly,_

_Benjamin Head._

* * *

 

_God, I hate this fucking place_

_God, I hate what happened to me._

_-_ from "Stand There 'Til You're Sober" by Bomb the Music Industry! 


	8. Pain is the Cleanser, Huh Huh

When Beavis was five years old, he hit his Uncle Jed by accident with his baseball bat while playing. Jed yanked the bat out of his sticky hands and beat him around the head with it, two-handed, swinging it like a sword as Butt-Head screamed at him to _quit it, he's sorry, leave him alone!_  

Now, fifteen years old and cycling into the cold wind on such a dull November morning, he tried to remember what he did to make Jed leave off. Because he had stopped, and not because his arm had gotten tired, either. 

Butt-Head remembered stepping into the range of the bat with his hands up like a boxer, six years old and so small, such a klutz, disappointing his mom in everything he did. He remembered cradling Beavis's poor crumpled body, blood streaming in crooked rivers from his nose. But everything in between was a purpleish blur, as a bruise is, the bruises that Beavis showed him the next day that broke his heart.

What did he do then that made it right?

What could he do now to avenge the dead?

Todd and his gang always hung out at the abandoned construction site. Butt-Head pointed his bike in that direction, thinking back to all the rotten things he'd done to them to get his heart beating hate instead of blood. He'd smashed their bikes with his car. He'd stuffed them in the trunk of his car and driven over bumpy roads for twenty miles (and Beavis started crying in the dark, the two of them crushed up so close together that Butt-Head could feel his tears on his leg). He'd kicked his way into their house, hogged their couch, eaten their dinner for the night, and gotten them beaten up and arrested. 

Plus, he'd borrowed about two hundred dollars from them in five- and ten-dollar denominations since the day they'd all first met, and had yet to pay any of it back.

The skeletons of unfinished buildings loomed ahead; Butt-Head hopped off his bike and stashed it in a bramble-bush for safekeeping. He wouldn't put it past Todd to bend the frame into a pretzel and strangle him with it.

Dawn was breaking in fits and starts, and the sound of coarse laughter rang clear through the thin, wintry air. He crept closer, straining to hear.

"....So, I give them the firework, right? And two days later, what do I hear? Only that the blond guy managed to get himself killed....Yeah, I know, right? Fuckin' retards couldn't set up a rocket without gettin' splatted....Like a bug, that's what Earl said, din'tcha Earl? When the coroner opened him up, he musta  _puked!_ Wasn't nothin' there anymore, 'cos it'd all been turned to goop....quit bogarting my fuckin' joints, asshole."

There was Todd, holding court with Earl and Tanqueray, his wall-eyed girlfriend. They'd gotten weed from somewhere; the thick, lazy smoke drifted above their heads. Butt-Head wrinkled his nose when the stink hit him; it yanked him into unwelcome memories of his Uncle Mike's house (and Beavis put a nervy hand on his knee when the chick in the movie bent over, and her private parts looked like an eye socket with the ball taken out, and Butt-Head looked at the blood-coloured mess and felt so afraid). 

(He stood over Beavis, staring up at this behemoth, this monster silhouetted by the sunset through the windows, screaming,  _I'll kill you! I swear to God I'll kill you!)_

Striding into the light, he called, "How's it going?"

Tanqueray swore under her breath and flicked away the butt of her joint. Earl swung his head around to stare at him, eyes wide and shiny with fear. Toddtook his damn time finishing his joint; eventually, he looked up.

"Hey, it's....what the fuck was your name again?"

"Doesn't matter," Butt-Head snapped. "But you remember me."

"Yeah, kid, I do." Todd scattered his cronies with a wave of his hand. "I sold you a firework. Only, the way I remember it, there was two of you back then. Where'd Blondy go?"

Butt-Head shrugged. The same old rage had begun to simmer; it tasted of blood and soot in his mouth. "I thought you knew. Or didja push your crap to another kid too sweet to get that you're an asshole?"

Todd smirked. "He wasn't sweet. He was a year away from wearing a helmet full-time."

"You killed him," Butt-Head growled. Neither of them realised it, but they were circling one another, ready for the oncoming fight.

"He killed himself. It's the law of natural selection, kiddo - all the canker gets cut away from the tree."

Butt-Head snorted. "Huh - if that's, like, true? Then you should be dead, too. I mean, you don't have a real job. Mechanical Max lets you screw around at his garage twice a week, and the rest of the time you cash your food stamps and act tough in parking lots. You ain't worth much."

Some of the swagger dropped from Todd's roughhatched face. "You're on thin ice, girl."

"Why do you always call us that, anyway?"

"Call you  _what,_ dickhole?"

"Girls. Chicks." Butt-Head affected a tone of innocent wonderment. "Do you, uh, like little boys? I mean, sexually? 'Cos that's the vibe I'm getting."

"I'm warning you,  _back down."_

"Somehow, you're always looking for an excuse to, like, beat us up."

"Last chance." Todd's hands tightened into fists.

"It has to be some kinda sex thing."

"Oh, that's it," Todd snarled, and charged. 

Butt-Head had spent most of his life dodging a terrible fate, and he twisted away from his attacker with ease and aplomb, clipping his ankle as he careened past. Todd stumbled; as he staggered about, trying to right himself, Butt-Head swung back his leg and kicked him in the back of the knee. The mechanic listed and toppled; as he crouched, hissing, in the dirt, Butt-Head kicked him again, in the ribs this time. Todd made a high-pitched noise like a rusty gate turning and fell to his side.

Butt-Head rained blows on his back and head with his little fists, thumping the breath out of his lungs, battering his blood to syrup, wanting to kill him. The only thing he wanted more was for Beavis to be alive again. An idea struck him, and he balanced the heel of his ugly rubber shoe on his opponent's nape to stomp the life out of him. 

"Benny. Stop."

Someone grabbed Butt-Head from behind and lifted him, bodily, from Todd's limp form. The smell of patchouli and pot pourri enveloped him; the part of his brain that wasn't swimming in adrenaline informed him that Mr. Van Driessen had him. He jerked and twisted in an attempt to get free, but the teacher, though slender, was strong as an oak. Socializing with Bradley Buzzcut was a sink-or-swim kind of thing; one learned to lift weights whether one liked it or not.

* * *

"How did you find me?"

Van Driessen sighed. "I read that note you left me, put two and two together. Oh, and your screams could be heard two blocks away."

"Huh?" Butt-Head's eyebrows lifted. "I wasn't screaming."

"No, you were....stuff like, 'you killed him, are you happy now', 'there won't be enough of you left to bury'....my personal favourite was, 'I'll shit on your corpse'."

Butt-Head had the grace to blush. "Uh, sorry."

"Not your fault. I suppose all the toxicity had to come out somehow." Van Driessen took a left turn for the school. "Look, can we talk about this later on? I could drop you home again this evening. Is that okay with you?"

Butt-Head nodded. "Thanks for letting me sleep over last night, by the way."

"Hey, it's no trouble, mmkay? Anytime. But I do need to talk to you later on. I mean, you went from catatonia last night to beating up a guy twice your size this morning. I'm worried about you."

Butt-Head stared at him. "Nobody's ever said that to me before."

Van Driessen pointed his sad eyes at the road. "Not even Beavis?"

"No....Beavis didn't really worry. He, he always took it for granted that stuff would turn out alright."

* * *

_With the prophet Isaiah on the crook of your arm_

_Saying, I will protect you from all earthly harm._

-"Isaiah", by Noah Gundersen

 

 

 


	9. Detention Intervention

News of the fight spread at the speed of a zombie virus - Earl reported it, Tanqueray embellished it, Mr. Van Driessen refused to comment and set the rumours blazing. By the time Butt-Head's lunch break rolled around, the two-minute asskicking had transmorgrified into an hour-long car chase through the desert scrub, culminating in a bullet-raddled standoff that had landed Todd in the ICU. Principal McVicker called the four-foot-tall reaver to his office when the bell rang, his voice wobbly with rage on the intercom.

When Butt-Head got there, Coach Buzzcut and Van Driessen were standing behind the principal. Buzzcut was attempting to mold his resting fury-face into something resembling compassion; Van Driessen was polishing his glasses, as clear an omen as any croaking raven.

"Uhhhhhhhh, sit down! And don't talk!" McVicker barked. Bemused, Butt-Head settled into his usual spot in front of his desk and set his expression to Guileless Neutral.

"I've been hearing stories about you!" the principal rasped. "What's this about a fight in the desert this morning?"

Butt-Head shrugged. "Todd sold us the firework that killed Beavis. I kicked his ass out there. Ask Earl."

McVicker's hands trembled like leaves in an autumn breeze. "Th-that's not all I've heard! I've got at least twenty other students saying that you stabbed him multiple times in the face!"

"What?! No way! I just punched him and kicked him a bunch!"

"Actually," Van Driessen interjected, "Butt-Head's telling the truth. I checked in with the hospital - Todd only sustained two cracked ribs and some bruises."

"I'd say that the only thing Butt-Head really made a dent in was Lanuzzi's ego," Buzzcut added, crossing his arms. "But I'm warning you, soldier - we don't tolerate vigilantes amongst the student body."

"Yeah," McVicker groused. "Under normal circumstances, I'd have you expelled....but I gotta take your recent personal troubles into account. Thirty hours of after-school detention, and if you get into another fight before the school year's out, so God help me, I'll find the paddle and use it!"

Butt-Head reared back. "But Todd isn't in school anymore! It didn't even happen on-campus!"

"Look, it doesn't matter," Van Driessen sighed, putting his glasses back on at last. "We can't have students going all Mad Max on people-"

"For the last time,  _there was no car chase."_

"-Whether or not they deserve it," Van Driessen finished, riding over Butt-Head's interruption. He glanced at his watch. "We've kept you long enough. Go and get your lunch. You're meeting me this evening in your homeroom, mmkay? Bring your homework."

Butt-Head wasn't lively enough to throw his chair to the floor and scream; the best he could muster was a cold, open-mouthed glare and a slow stalk out the door.  

Once the three administrators were alone, Buzzcut scowled. "I'm just putting it out there, gentlemen, that tricking a student into taking detentions that he doesn't deserve is morally disgusting."

Mr. Van Driessen crossed his arms and sagged against the wall. "Well, we wouldn't've had to lie to him if  _someone_ -" he glared at Principal McVicker-"hadn't blown the year's counselling budget on the football team."

"Uhhhhhh, quit ganging up on me!" McVicker protested. "What happens if the little twerp figures out that he's right?"

"Then he blows up in our faces and never trusts us again," Van Driessen snapped. "Look, he won't figure it out. Butt-Head's been in trouble for so many things, we could tell him that he's been sentenced to death for stealing paperclips and he wouldn't question it. Give me a month talking to him, that's all I ask. If we leave him as he is, he'll go completely off the rails and we'll have made another Todd." 

"I don't get why you're doing this," McVicker grunted, fishing around in his desk for the airline-sized bottle of whiskey he kept there. "Bradley'd be a better choice. He can keep the bastard in line, that's for sure."

"With all due respect, sir," Buzzcutt growled, "that is the worst idea I've heard all day. And I had that kid in Calculus this morning."

"Butt-Head likes me, kind of," Van Driessen explained. "I mean, he's been letting his guard down around me these past few days. He walked three blocks in the rain to get to my house last night. I've known him since he was pretty much a baby. Just, just let me have this month, okay? I can turn him around. God forgive me for saying it, but we could never have reached him while Beavis was alive."

McVicker waved him away. "Get out of here, both of you. I don't want to hear another word about this until the detentions are up. Oh, wait - Coach, wait a minute. I've gotten some abuse complaints I need to talk to you about."

* * *

"So, where are your parents at these days?" 

Butt-Head looked up from the algebra questions he was working through. "Huh?"

"Your parents," Mr. Van Driessen repeated. "Where are they?"

The boy drew his lower lip away from his teeth. "Uhh, why do you wanna know?"

Van Driessen shrugged. "I've never seen them myself. Every parent-teacher conference, I get a different uncle of yours. Jack, Mike, Laurence, Tam...."

Butt-Head went back to his sums. "My mom's still around, if that's what you're getting at. A guy used to come around for me and say he was my dad....usedta teach me tricks, like the thing where you pull someone's finger. Beavis tagged along, like, all the time. But then he stopped comin'."

"Does that upset you?"

"Naw, he wasn't, like, a good provider. Mom got food stamps a lot. Whenever she saw him, she'd kinda get a mean face, like this." Butt-Head demonstrated this, pulling down his brows and wrinkling his nose into a golem-like glare of disgust. "Now it's just me an' her."

"But you live by yourselves." Van Driessen had given up on the singular, too.

"Yeah....that house is my house, I lived in it with my mom when I was little." Butt-Head finished the sums and checked his answers in the back of the textbook. Satisfied, he slid the book back into his bag. "Mom moved out back in seventh grade."

Van Driessen leant back in his chair, eyebrows raised. "She left you to fend for yourself?"

Butt-Head stared through him with his empty eyes for a long moment. Then, life bled back into his face, and he said, "More like she quit by mutual agreement," and zipped up his bag. 

"I....I don't understand. Could you elaborate, please?"

Butt-Head sighed, as though trying to remain patient. "Look, we were all in a bad place back then. Mom had this disease - not a body disease, in her head. She had to go to the special hospital in Houston to get better. They took her, like, in a hurry? It was just me in the house....I called Beavis that night. His mama, she'd gotten slapped in the head so bad that she wasn't even barely somebody's mom anymore." He doodled little patterns with his finger on the desk. "My grandma was sendin' us money until last spring, when my Uncle Mike said we had to get jobs."

Van Driessen chose his next words with the utmost care. "Is your mother....planning on returning?"

Butt-Head shrugged. "I talk to her on the phone a lot. She says she might, like, come back to Highland? But, y'know, I'm not countin' the days or anything. She usedta to get real bad, slept in a lot, cried a whole bunch. I thought she was a zombie back in first grade. That's what she was like."

Van Driessen eyeballed him for a minute as he stared out the window, tracing the desk with his fingertip.

There were a lot of things he wanted to say; questions, advice, comfort. But children do not take kindly to adult meddling; he knew he'd probed long enough. 

Instead, he cleared up his own papers and said, "Come on. Time to go home."

* * *

Butt-Head wound down the window to the base and sat back, enjoying the rushy breeze on his face. He was quiet; since Beavis had died, it was as though he'd retreated into himself, like a snail.

"So," Van Driessen said, "got any plans for the week-end?"

As was usual now, it took a couple of seconds for the question to register. When it finally made its way to the arcane part of Butt-Head capable of sentient thought, he replied, "Uh, I dunno. I should probably drop by my Uncle Jack, see how he's getting on at the AA."

"Oh, I remember that. Wow. How long has it been?"

"Six months. He's, uh. Pretty proud. Of being sober." The kid shifted from side to side in the passenger seat. "He's, like, invited me to his next meeting? But I kinda don't wanna go. I mean, I'm still embarrassed about, well...."

"That business at the, um, gentlemen's club?"

"No, not that. The other thing."

"That time when he broke into the rape crisis centre? I see." Van Driessen spun the wheel for the exit into the suburbs. "Well, I'm sure it wouldn't hurt to tag along. You know, I grew up with Jack, went to high school with him."

"Yeah, he said he stuffed some guy's head down a toilet so far he went into the S-bend and almost drowned, back in tenth grade. That you?"

"Mm-hmm. So, am I dropping you off at your house?"

"Yeah....gonna call Stewart, see does he wanna come over. I'll make him some dinner so he doesn't haveta go home 'til bedtime."

Van Driessen tried to keep the the surprise he felt from leaking into his voice. "You can cook?"

"Well, I c'n melt cheese over nachos," Butt-Head admitted, looking away. "And I can stick marshmallows onto graham crackers. That's my favourite. I'll do that."

What could be said? "Here we go. Take care, now. You'll be in school tomorrow, right?"

"Uh, yeah." Butt-Head stared at him, as though unwilling to believe his stupidity. "Free meals program, sir. I can go straight to Burger World after for my shift and get dinner there." His voice was confident - see how well my life is put together. Admire how great I'm getting on.

"Butt-Head....you'd come to school even if you didn't have to partake of the meals program, wouldn't you?"

"This isn't your way of, like, telling me that we're doing sentence digramming in English again, is it?"

"No, no it's not. But wouldn't you come to school anyway?"

"Uhh....I guess."

"And you're not just saying that to spare my feelings."

"Eh, no."

"Okay." A stilted pause. "Well, I'm off. See you tomorrow."

"You too, sir."

Much later, at home, Van Driessen found comfort in the sudden memory that Butt-Head didn't even know what feelings were, much less spare them.

* * *

_How will you sleep tonight_

_With the sheets on fire_

_And the money spent on the medicine?_

\- "Lovers Who Make Love", Ciaran Laverty.


	10. The Light At The End Of The Tunnel....

The next evening, with winter settling in cold and dry outside, Mr. Van Driessen leant over his desk and placed a foil-wrapped package in front of Butt-Head.

The boy started back. "What's that?"

"I had some dinner left over last night, thought I might as well not let it go to waste." Van Driessen tore a corner off the foil so that the savoury smell of it would waft out. "You could go to work and not be hungry on top of being tired. You know, I can't stand thinking of what'd happen if you fainted into the deep-fat fryer."

It was barbeque chicken with a salad, and it smelled good. Butt-Head ignored it for as long as he could, growling at his assigned reading; finally, he crumbled. Greedy fingers ripped apart the rest of the foil and fumbled at the chicken. He stripped the meat from the leg in seconds, worrying it like a shark at a whale carcass. He slowed down once it came to the salad, of course; but, to Van Driessen's surprise, he ate that too.

When he was done, all he said was, "Uhh, thanks. I guess," and went back to his reading.

"Put the foil in the trash, please," was all Van Driessen made as a reply. In the confines of his head, he was thrilled.

They each worked on in silence for the next few minutes: one ticked and exed his way through a pop quiz, while the other made faces at _Wuthering Heights._ Van Driessen, observing him, noticed that his eyes weren't jagging across the page after the words; instead, they crawled from letter to letter, foggy and tortured with incomprehension.

"You don't look too impressed with Emily Brontë," he noted, trying to ease into the inevitable Conversation. With a capital C.

Butt-Head nodded, mute. The light glinted off the snarl of his braces. He stabbed the page with the tip of his finger, as though touching the words would make sense of them.

"Are you....having trouble with the reading?"

The resulting glare could have scorched a layer of skin off a civilian. But Mr. Van Driessen was no ordinary man. He weathered the scowl, and was rewarded; after a moment of death beams, Butt-Head dropped his eyes and muttered, "A little."

"Well, I admire the fact that you're attempting the assignment anyway. A lot of people would've given up by now."

Butt-Head perked up. Kids like being told that they're better than everyone else.

Van Driessen slid the book out of his hands. "Maybe I could read it to you. That way, you could get your math homework out of the way before you go to work."

"Woah!" Butt-Head's skinny eyebrows rocketed up his forehead. "You're allowed do that?"

"I sure am. Just listen, mmkay?"

And he read, not expecting much, because this was a boy who'd once heard "girls like werewolves now" and decided to pay a vaguely lupine homeless man (in gum) to bite him. But - to his shock - Butt-Head actually sat up and  _listened._ With his brow creased up and his arms folded on the desk like the legs of a collapsible chair, he looked scholarly. For once in his short, grubby life, he was a proper student. 

Van Driessen read on to the end of the chapter - it was the nadir of the whole plot, just before Lockwood comes to stay in the Grange - and closed the book. "I suppose that it wouldn't hurt to go over the questions orally," he said, offhand, like he didn't think he was pushing his luck.

Butt-Head shrugged. "Okay." Then - there was that time-delay again - he snickered. "Huh. _Oral."_

The questions were meant to be challenging for an average student, not a part-timer who thinks SAT is a terminal autoimmune disease that develops from HIV. Van Driessen tried to read them as though he wasn't hoping against hope for a miracle.  But the kid sat back at the first question - metaphors or some such, a toughie - took a moment to translate it into whatever patois he used inside his brain, and gave a slow, thoughtful answer that could just about (in the subjective hellscape of English Lit assessment) be called _right._

Mr. Van Driessen splaying the book open on his lap, blinked, and said, "Wow."

"Uhh, was it okay?"

"It was great."

Now it was Butt-Head's turn to blink. "Woah," he murmured, and his sincere, innocent surprise made the teacher's week.

They ambled through the following four questions, and Butt-Head answered each one with accuracy ranging from "pretty good, could probably go deeper" to "spot on, I guess". He moved onto his (blessedly free of story problems) math homework with a palpable air of contentment. Van Driessen went back to the pop quizzes feeling blown open.

* * *

 Later, as the van pulled up in front of Butt-Head's battered house (and how quickly it had become just his, instead of his and Beavis's):

"I forgot to ask - how'd that sleepover with Stewart go?"

"Uhhhh....his mom answered when I rang. She said I was a bad influence."

"Really? She said that?"

"No, she said I'd kill him too and not even know to say sorry. I gotta go get changed for my shift. See you tomorrow, sir, and mighty obliged for the, uh, food."

* * *

"I'm serious, Bradley," Van Driessen gushed. "Competent answers! One right after the other! It was beautiful!"

Coach Buzzcut grunted. "Hold your horses, civilian. We haven't ruled out demonic possession."

The two teachers were in Buzzcut's house, holding court over a couple of root beers and two servings of paella. Van Driessen was so excited about what had happened that he couldn't take breaks to chew; food kept falling into his beard as he talked. The coach frowned at his plate, stabbing the rice with his fork.

"You," Van Driessen gabbled through a mouthful of food, "have  _no_ idea of how long I've waited for this moment. But, I'm telling you, it was worth it. All of it. The pain. The destruction. The malapropisms."

"I don't know, Dave," Buzzcut growled, spearing a shrimptail as he spoke. "Let's not forget - by your own testimony, it sounds like he's functionally illiterate."

"I know! But we can fix that! Heck, I could start working on it with him tomorrow. He could borrow my audiobooks in the meantime."

"Well, even if he is picking up in English, his math skills are still nonexistent." The coach took a break to slug root beer. "Actually, his algebra's pretty good. For the most part. But he'll flounder the second we move onto geometry - you'll see it."

"Bradley, you ass." Van Driessen thumped the table like a lawyer. "He's not used to complex concepts! Algebra's a straightforward, self-contained discipline. And the letters don't mean anything. But in geometry, you have to take in whole paragraphs of information just to _begin_ a question. Of course he'd be lost. However -" he poked at thin air with his knife for emphasis - "if you took some time out to explain it to him, break it down piece by piece....he's a smart kid. We've all been doing him a massive disservice."

Buzzcut sighed, and gave him a rare, sad smile. "Dave, have you considered that he's going out of his way to impress you? You're the guy he likes the most."

"He likes all of us," Van Driessen argued. "With other kids, you get a lot of negativity - 'I hate this', 'you're dead to me', stuff tlike that. Butt-Head doesn't have any hatreds."

"So, he's a paragon of Christian forgiveness, huh?" The sarcasm all but dripped from Buzzcut's mouth. 

"He doesn't forgive. He forgets. Major difference."

Buzzcut sighed and wiped his mouth with his hand. "How's he been doing without Beavis?"

"Bradley, I don't want to jinx it, but....I think he's adjusted to his new paradigm. I'd never say it to his face -"

"Oh, Lord."

"- But I think that Beavis's death could be the best thing that's ever happened to him."

The coach dropped his fork.

"Academically, I mean."

"Dave, I - that's very wrong on several different levels. If you were in my unit, and said that about a fellow soldier, I'd have you on hygiene duty for a month!"

"Oh, enough with the military talk already." Van Driessen swatted at him in play. "I'll never say it to his face."

* * *

"Uhh....thanks for inviting me to your meeting, Uncle Jack."

"Hey, it was a pleasure to have you, Benny."

"Sorry about the, um, coffee...."

"Aw, don't worry about that. Joe was gonna fall off the wagon anyway. You just gave him the push he needed. He'll be back next month with his tail 'twixt his legs. Now, you been avoiding an important question all night...."

"Uncle, please -"

"Nephew, you're not dealing with your loss the way you should. Billy Beavis was a good friend of yours, right from when you boys were messin' in your daidees. Now, I don't know if you guys had something kinda more important goin' on -"

" _Uncle Jack!"_

"- An' there ain't no shame in it if you were, but that sorta passing'll leave a wound on ya that just won't scab. You gotta get in touch with the bad feelings, kid. You ain't had it so hot, and it'll come back to bite you in the ass, save you deal with it now. Hell, you remind me of myself when I was young - 'cept my shit was my own fault. Benny, you didn't do nothin' to deserve this."

"...."

"I gotta run home now. I heard Dale's causin' trouble - God, they might as well've clapped lil' ankle bracelets on all of us, it's like he's got us under house arrest instead of the other way round. You shouldn't go by your Uncle Laurence's trailer no more, least not until someone cuts the boy loose. Remember what I said, nephew."

"....I will, sir."

"And phone your mama, will ya? She gets so worried 'bout you."

* * *

 

_This ain't a miracle...._

\- "God and Satan", Billy Clyro. 


	11. ....Is Most Likely An Oncoming Train

It lasted for two weeks.

* * *

Butt-Head had never been "right" before in his life. People had told him that he was stupid and idiotic, that his ideas were worthless, since he'd been old enough to understand what that meant. He'd always accepted this without question. It was a part of how he defined himself. When people first met him, he always warned them that he was "pretty much a dumbass" early on in the conversation. He'd believed it of Beavis, too.

The unexpected discovery that he was capable of complex thought shook his soul. That was not all; it also disrupted the bovine peace of his world. Mr. Van Driessen gave him an audiotape of "Wuthering Heights" and a cassette with the homework questions recorded on it and told him to have the evening's assignment ready for the next morning. Butt-Head scowled at him, and cranked his mouth open to complain, but Van Driessen headed him off with a quick shake of the head.

"Benjamin, I've been doing you a disservice by expecting so little of you all these months."

"Uhh....no, you haven't."

"Uhh, yes. I have," the teacher snarked. "Now that I know what you're capable of, I can finally help you achieve some sort of academic progress. The questions for tonight's assignment are on Track Three of Tape Two. I'm expecting some honest effort, Benjamin."

"Quit _calling_ me that," Butt-Head growled, and stalked out.

Coach Buzzcut added to this newfound intellectual discomfort by turning him into a pet project. That afternoon, he left the class to work on a formidable set of problems and hunkered down beside his desk.

Butt-Head shrank back, eyeing him like a kicked dog.

Buzzcut frowned at him and muttered, "Let's have a look at those simultaneous equations you've been having trouble with."

The veins in his forehead throbbed as he took his charge through each tiny, seperate step - Butt-Head stumbled at hurdles the other students didn't even see. But, somehow, they made it through.

When the boy got his first ever equation right, his nose started bleeding. A huge, clotted blot splashed onto the page, staining it like a seal of merit.

* * *

The days trundled by. Butt-Head's eureka-moment nosebleeds slowed from spurts to trickles. Mr. Herrera, marking homework one evening, realised that there was enough material in what the kid had turned in to grade. A D - the highest grade Butt-Head had earned since the age of five.

"Well done, Benjamin!" Mr. Van Driessen crowed as he drove him home.

Butt-Head shrugged, pleased and embarrassed all at once. "It's not that great."

"Are you kidding me? It's fantastic! I'm so proud of you."

Butt-Head locked away that praise inside of him, and used it to fuel all his endeavors the next day. When Social Studies seemed too thorny to touch, he thought _proud of you_ and soldiered on. When the algebra reared up and threatened to crush him, the memory made him fight his way through. It forced him to listen in Home Ec, made him sweat like a docker in gym class.

There was a little light left over still at eight o'clock that night, during his shift at Burger World. A busload of noisy Little League kids rolled in, fresh off a soccer win against a far-away rival. Hungry to the point of barbarianism, they stared with open mouths for minutes at a time at the menu, mumbling their orders. 

The manager had drafted in his spotty, supercilious nephew to help; he barked at the kids to hurry up and watched Butt-Head move around in the kitchen, smirking through the greasy heat. Butt-Head flicked his limp quiff off his forehead and put a hand to the Beavis-ache in his heart.

Midnight found him half-asleep on a plastic chair at the Wash-A-Teria, watching his uniform thump in a washing-machine. The kind Mexican woman who ran the joint had to wake him to tell him that his load was done. 

And then he had to go home to bed so that he could wake up the next morning and do it all again.

* * *

Principal McVicker roared Butt-Head's name down the intercom, barked a summons to his office, and let the microphone squeal for ten straight seconds before he remembered to turn it off.

"This blows," he growled, sotto voce, to Cassandra. "I've been busting ass all week. I didn't do anything."

Cassandra sighed and patted his hand. "You know how he is," she whispered. "Just go in, nod your head, take the poison. Try not to glare."

Butt-Head glared at her and started the long Walk of Shame, out the room and down the hall. 

When he sloped into the office, McVicker was eating Xanax out of the palm of his hand. He made an almighty gulp, then gestured at the chair in front of him and spluttered, "Uhhhhhh, sit down! And don't talk!"

Butt-Head thumped into the chair. Its seat was permanently stamped with the faint hollows of his buttocks, he'd sat in it so many times. A chair similarly marked propped open the door. He fought the instinct to drag it over beside him for Beavis.

Principal McVicker reached into a drawer and withdrew a piece of paper, scribbled all over with graphite. "You know what this is?"

Butt-Head squinted. "Uhh....hmm. Looks like that English Lit pop quiz I turned in yesterday."

McVicker threw it down on the desk between them, spitting, "If it's yours, then explain the grade you got!"

Butt-Head leant across, frowning. That was his handwriting, and he remembered thinking up those answers. But....why was the capital letter "A" slashed in jubilant red pen in the top left-hand corner?

There were more letters strung together beneath it. Butt-Head knitted his brow and made his best attempt to parse them. Suddenly, the letters transformed into words, and a voice in his head read them out:

_Benjamin -_

_Well done! I can see how much effort you've put into your work. Much like a sinkhole, you have hidden depths! :)_

_\- Mr. Van D._

" _WELL?!"_ McVicker roared, stabbing at the page with his finger. "Who'd you cheat off of?"

"Uhhh....nobody," Butt-Head replied, feeling quite shaken and pale.

McVicker thumped the desk with his fist. "I call bullshit! You're stupider than a cow following another cow into the slaughterhouse!"

"Actually," a cool voice interjected, "the correct phrase is _more stupid._ Wait, I tell a lie - it's not correct at all." Van Driessen put a steady hand on Butt-Head's shoulder. "He earned that grade, Principal McVicker. I watched him take the test. His eyes didn't move from the page."

McVicker stared at them both with his bloodshot eyes, fuming in silence.

"Now, I think you've wasted enough of our time." Van Driessen motioned to Butt-Head to get up and shepherded him out the door. "Go back to class, Benjamin. I have to say something to Principal McVicker. Oh, and tell Earl to tuck himself back in and put away the magazine for when he's in the privacy of his own home, would you?"

Sure enough, when Butt-Head returned to the teacherless chaos of homeroom, he saw that Todd's former henchman was, indeed, surreptiously playing pocket-snooker whilst using the previous month's issue of _Hustler_ as a modesty shield. He passed on his message and went back to his seat.

"How bad was it?" Stewart asked.

"He called me a sinkhole," Butt-Head told him, and slipped into a sort of open-eyed coma. Stewart had grown used to this new facet of the kid's Beavisless existence, and let him be.

* * *

"Uh, Mr. Van Driessen?"

"Hmm?"

"That grade I got on the pop quiz....was it real?"

Van Driessen laughed out loud, glancing from the road to give Butt-Head a smile. "Of course it was! I'm thinking of pinning it up in the display case. You've made such progress these past few weeks."

Butt-Head turned his face to his knees, flushing. "My handwriting's not good enough for the display case," he mumbled.

"It's good enough for me," Van Driessen informed him, in a tone that brooked no argument. "Don't put yourself down about this, mmkay?" He paused, and said this next without really thinking about it: "I really do think that you're starting to turn your life around."

Butt-Head looked up. "Uhh, what?"

Van Driessen, concentrating on the road, forgot who he was talking to and let his mouth run ahead of his brain. "Oh....it's just that you've been kind of in a rut since Beavis died, but I think you're beginning to pull yourself out of it."

Butt-Head, who spent most of his time mentally skirting around the giant hole in his self where Beavis used to be, remained silent. Van Driessen did not notice the small, quiffed bundle of rage that had begun fermenting in the passenger seat, and so talked on.

"Please don't take this the wrong way, but...." He sighed. "I don't think Beavis was the best influence on you. I mean, your work ethic's improved beyond even what I'd hoped, and your classroom behaviour is so much better now that you don't have him to distract you. It really is a fresh start -"

"You're glad he died."

A cobra could not have spat such venom.

Van Driessen shut his mouth, horrified and disbelieving.  _Did I say that - did I really - of all the terrible things I've done, this is the worst -_

"I loved him," Butt-Head went on, his voice low and strained. "He was my world. He was the most important person on Earth. Living without him is like having to sleep in a collapsing house - and you think I'm better off?!" The last words were shrieked.

Van Driessen swallowed, kept his eyes on the road. He didn't trust himself to say anything else. He could feel Butt-Head's pond-coloured eyes boring into the side of his head like drill bits.

"I was always too pussy to tell him." The child's voice was as thin as smoke. "I....I thought I'd have forever to say it. I don't know why he stayed all that time. He could've had so many friends, done good for people. He was that kind of person. But, but I didn't. Let him go. I think he loved me too, I like to think that, but he always used to say that we weren't really friends." He breathed an angry sigh and squeezed his hands together. "I don't know what we were. I wish somebody could tell me. I don't know what a person has to be to you for you to miss 'em like this. It's just the worst, Mr. Van Driessen, it's the worst pain I ever got. You know, every morning, no matter where I am, the very first thing I do is look for Beavis, and  _he's never there."_

A moment, heavy with agony, passed. Then, Van Driessen cleared his throat and clenched his hands tight on the wheel.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered. Butt-Head was crying now, tears running down his face in silent gouts, and he felt like joining in. Why did everything have to be so hard? Why did it have to feel like a hand around your throat?

"I _know_ you're sorry," Butt-Head growled. "It doesn't put a single word back in your mouth. Hell, _I'm_ sorry. It isn't gonna put Beavis back together."

He didn't speak again for the rest of the journey. When they pulled up at his house, he got out without a word. He did give Van Driessen a wave, though - a sad flutter of his tiny fingers. Then, he sloped inside, and Van Driessen drove away, feeling monstrous.

* * *

The next morning, it was discovered that Butt-Head had vanished. 

* * *

_I guess even in Paradise they get those straight-to-video kinds of days._

_-_ "Those Straight-To-Video Kinds Of Days", Songdog. 

 


	12. You Gotta Take The Long Way Home

"Bradley," Mr. Van Driessen breathed into the phone, "we have a serious problem."

"Let me guess," Buzzcut growled. His voice sounded weighted, as though barbells had been hung on his words to drag them down. "You let slip to your most vulnerable student that you thought the death of his best friend is the best thing to have ever happened to him, and you turned up at his house this morning to apologise and the front door's hanging open."

"....How did you know?"

Buzzcut sighed. "Stewart called in on him this morning. Apparently, Butt-Head's gone to see his mother. Thing is, according to school records, he doesn't have a mother. There's no address listed, no phone number. Dave, we need to get this kid back in Highland before midnight. Listen carefully: I want you to get his mother's address, hop in that fucking hippy van of yours and be waiting at wherever Mom lives to pick him up. Got it?"

"Uh-huh. Don't worry. I know where I can get the address."

* * *

Laurence Head leant on the doorframe. He looked bored. "Yeah, Benny stopped by here this morning. Said he wanted t'see his mama. Asked if I'd drive him to Houston. Course, I said no. I got work in half an hour. Then he wanted my boy Larry Junior to escort him in on the back of his moped, but he's got his SATs comin' up an' he can't miss school." Head turned and snorted a blockage out of his nose into the grass. "What's all this worrying for, anyhow?"

Van Driessen took a deep breath to steady his brain. "Mr. Head, Benjamin hasn't been himself lately. He....he got upset last night, and I'm afraid that he'll do something stupid to himself in Houston and get badly hurt. Please, could you give me his mother's address so that I can pick him up?"

The man pulled his upper lip back, like a churlish horse. "Alright, I'll give it to ya. But you better not interfere with Benny and his mama. She don't see him but twice a year these days. She's got that mind disease - depression. Doesn't get out so much." Turning to look behind him, he yelled, "Dale? Git the paper with Marnie's address on it off the corkboard!"

A volley of muttered insults sounded. A few moments later, a mammoth young man with Butt-Head's ill-fitting features and his father's low glare stomped out to them. Clutched in his head-sized hand was a scrap of foolscap. Van Driessen took it and thanked him; the fellow grunted and vanished back into the recesses of the trailer.

"My eldest, Dale," Laurence murmured in a confiding tone. "He's under house arrest at the present moment in time. I hear a lot of you teachers pulin' and whinin' about my nephew, but y'all better thank Jesus he ain't got Dale's temper." Raising his voice, he said, "Now, you better be off. Find that boy, and make sure he knows how back an idea it is to mitch school." So saying, he stomped back inside his trailer and slammed the door behind him.

* * *

Butt-Head fed some change into the payphone and dialled the only number he knew off by heart.

It rang twice before it was picked up. A woman's voice, raspy and sonorous, answered: "Who is it?"

Butt-Head looked around on instinct to check that no-one was listening and replied, "Hi, Mommy."

"My baby." Marnie Head's tone changed from dour to gentle. "Honey, I heard what happened to your friend. I'm sorry I haven't called."

"It's okay, Mom. The phone at our house, like, doesn't work anymore. Look, I'm in the city right now. Can I come visit you?"

"Benny, you c'n come see me whenever," Marnie said. She sounded as though she was trying hard to smile. "You get over here right away. I'll fix you some lunch." It was, by this time, one o'clock in the afternoon.

"Uhh....that sounds good," Butt-Head told her. "I'm on my way, Mom. I'll be there, uh, soon. I don't know how many minutes."

"You take your time, boy. Just keep safe." 

* * *

Houston is very far away from Highland. Mr. Van Driessen got there at six in the evening, sweating from the heat and the fear.

He got lost in the city, navigating endless tortured intersection for half an hour, an endless montage of grisly images rolling past his eyes all the while - Butt-Head being broken on the ground by the big boys, woozy from drugged Pabst in a stranger's grubby apartment. Finally, directions obtained from a pharmacist steered him towards the address on the litter scrap of paper Dale had given to him.

Sunset Heights was a meek, skinny building, around which petty garbage blew. By the time Van Driessen reached it, the sky was as dark as a tunnel. High up on the wall, a single window shed butter-coloured light.

The building smelled like piss and mildew, the way a house smells when you come home after a long time away. The teacher stepped over a mauve stain on the carpet and coughed top get the superintendent's attention.

"Yeah?" the man growled, putting down the business section.

"I'm looking for this boy here. I'm his teacher," Van Driessen told him, and pushed a printout of Butt-Head's dreadful yearbook picture across the desk.

The super's craggy face softened when he saw it. "Oh, Benny? Polite kid. He went up to visit his mama this afternoon."

"Which apartment are they in?"

"Number two-zero-one. Second floor, last door on the right. Don't bust in or nothing - Marnie's got one of them delicate constitutions." The man vanaished back behind his paper.

The stairs were dark, cobwebby; Van Driessen pushed gossamer threads away from his face as he mounted the steps. On the second-floor landing, light spilled from beneath the door at the end. As he got closer, he caught muted snatches of heavy-metal music.

Two knocks on the door summoned light footsteps; the door was opened, and a woman stood in the door and said, "What is it?"

Marnie Head was only a few inches taller than her son. She didn't have his face, or his wild, dark shock of hair - she looked like any woman you might see on the street, tired and worn-down and just trying to get by.

Butt-Head's deep voice rang from the apartment - "Who is it, Mom?"

Van Driessen remembered himself: "I'm, um, Butt - Benjamin's teacher over at Highland High. He sort of, well, ran away this morning. I came by to check up on him, see if he's okay."

"He's alright," Marnie told him, raising her eyebrows. "Why wouldn't he be? You talk with my brother Laurence or anything?"

Van Driessen allowed that he had.

"Well, didn't he tell you that Benny comes to see me every now and then? He just takes off sometimes. You can't corrall the wind, Mr...."

"Van Driessen. Please, though, call me David."

"David Van Driessen. Hmm. Anyway, my boy never did take kindly to being ordered around, and for the most part we let him be. My brothers keep an eye on him. But sometimes a kid just wants his mother - I guess today was one of 'em." She stepped aside. "Won't you come on in?"

Van driessen thanked her and stepped through the door. By this time, Butt-Head had grown curious, and was waiting in the hall. When he saw him, his face twisted, but he said nothing.

Marnie made coffee and hot cocoa, and everyone sat down and sipped while she talked about the recent Indian summer they'd been enjoying and how high the cost of living in Houston was rising. Butt-Head levelled his snake-gaze across the cups at his teacher, who tried as best as he could to ignore it.

A clock somewhere struck eight. Marnie put down her cup and reached across the table to pat Butt-Head's hand. "Well, looks like it's time for someone to be gettin' home."

"I can take him," Van Driessen offered, gathering up all the mugs and putting them into the sink to wash.

"Well, that's mighty kind of you. What do you say, Benny?"

"Thanks," the child said, not missing a beat. His stare felt like two hands pressing against Van Driessen's back.

Fifteen minutes later, the delph had been taken care of, and both and teacher and pupil were ready to leave. Butt-Head, looking desperate, threw his arms around his mother and whimpered into her ear. Marnie smoothed down his hair and whispered something to him. Whatever it was, it gave him the strength to disengage. His eyes were fierce and dry, rimed red, exactly like those of an old lizard.

* * *

Twenty minutes into the journey home, with the milky light of streetlights sliding over them both, Butt-Head turned Mr. Van Driessen and said, hoarse, "You're forgiven. I know that sounds, like, wussy 'n stuff. But it's true. You don't have to feel sorry anymore."

Van Driessen could not speak for a moment; choked up, throat burning, he smiled at his sullen charge and gave him a nod. Satisfied, Butt-Head sank back into his seat.

"I know that Beavis wouldn't be angry with me if he knew how he died," Butt-Head reflected, staring at the white road-markings flashing past. "He loved fire, y'know? Burning things, exploding things - he was obsessed."

"I know, Butt-Head."

"I paid for the firework." Butt-Head took a breath, wiped his nose on his sleeve, and went on. "It was gonna be my apology for....something shitty I did to him, I forget what exactly. He was so _excited._ He wanted the whole damn town to see it." He paused, still watching the night speed by. "If that thing'd gone off properly, if if it'd fizzled out, or fallen the other way, he'd still be here. With me."

"But he isn't," Van Driessen supplied.

Butt-Head sighed. "Yeah. It hurts, is all. But it's gettin', like, a little bit better. I still wake up sad in the morning, but sometimes funny things happen during the day."

"You don't laugh anymore, though," the teacher noted, glancing at him. "You used to laugh at everything. You and him both. Like hyenas."

Butt-Head shrugged. "That was _before._ This is  _after._ Don't you get it? That was our thing, not my own thing."

"I get it. It's funny, though...."

"What is?"

"I - I never thought I'd miss your laughter. I'm going to be honest here - I thought it annoying. Everybody did. But....you're right. Everything was different back then. If I could go back in time -"

"You can't."

"I know. But still."

* * *

_four years later_

A small figure, standing on the edge of an abandoned lot. His gown fluttered in the mild May breeze.

Butt-Head stooped down and laid a set of graduation robes, a mortarboard, and a diploma on the soil.

"Hey," he murmured. "Hey, Beavis. Congratulations. We made it."

The lot did not reply. Squinting, Butt-Head entertained the thought that he could see a familiar blond head bobbing far away, on the other side of the lot. A long head on a short body, swinging a bat around, yelling something about frog baseball.

"I can't," Butt-Head whispered. "Not today. But we're there, dude, I swear. You just gotta be patient and wait for me."

* * *

_'Cause in my head_

_You're still alive, you're still alive_

_And I know that it's a lie_

_But it's one I like_

_It's one I like._

_-_ "Nightclothes", Radical Face.


End file.
